


Raised Roots

by lady_ragnell



Category: Original Work
Genre: F/F, Farmer's Markets, Inspired by Hallmark Movies, Modern Fantasy, Past minor character death, Pegasus - Freeform, Small Towns, Witches, farming, pastoral fantasy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-28
Updated: 2020-10-01
Packaged: 2021-03-06 17:09:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 49,958
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26152453
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lady_ragnell/pseuds/lady_ragnell
Summary: Green witch Zilla is invited to leave her city coven for a month to run a friend's farm in the small town of Allerston, where she gets involved in town events, makes charms for the locals, and meets Ardith, whose family runs the local pegasus farm and who has a few problems that a witch could help out with.
Comments: 148
Kudos: 157





	1. Before

**Author's Note:**

> First, credit to **samyazaz** for the title she suggested as a joke, but it seems just Hallmark-y enough for this!
> 
> This is a project I've had in my head for a few years now, mixed together from equal parts Hallmark movies and the beloved fantasy novels I've read over my life (there are bits of Pratchett, Wrede, and McKinley in all this worldbuilding, to name just a few), and with 2020 being what it is, I needed to write something with more whimsy and self-indulgence than anything I'd tried to write before. And then I thought, well--probably I'm not the only one who needs that. So here it is for all of you to enjoy!
> 
> Updates should happen on Thursday nights, and if that changes, announcements to that effect will be made on my tumblr, which is [theladyragnell](theladyragnell.tumblr.com).

Zilla isn't surprised when her phone rings right as she's leaving Mrs. Brilley's. Nia often calls when she's scheduled to be finishing her rounds, and for once, she's on time, nobody asking her to linger, no distractions on her way between stops. She won't have to let it ring to voicemail and make an apologetic call back later.

When she glances at her screen, though, the call screen says it's from Hess, and that she missed a message from him earlier, which is enough to spike her interest up a little before she answers. “Hey, Hess, it's been a while! Sorry, I had my phone off during rounds. What's up?”

“Hi,” says Hess around a laugh, warm as ever. “Nice to talk to you, Zill, how are things? Still working for the coven?”

Zilla lets herself out of Mrs. Brilley's building and tries not to wince. “Sorry for jumping ahead there. Yeah, not a lot of bites on anything else, though the honey is still a really nice side business so I can make my tithes. What about you? Seems from the pictures like the farm is thriving.”

“Yes! Doing really great, actually, which is why I'm calling you.”

“Oh? Asking for a charm, or buying some honey? I'd be open to either.”

“A way bigger favor, in fact, though not technically a favor because you would be paid.” Hess clears his throat. “So, I've been offered a scholarship to a master farmer class full of world-renowned agricultural experts, on a really amazing experimental farm that's breeding some really exciting varieties of plants.”

“That's amazing! What's the favor, then?”

“I want you to come run Deep Roots while I'm away. It's a month, and I have to fly all the way to Ilania in the middle of summer when there are a hundred things to do, and my local help is great, but it's all students who can't go full-time on it. And I thought hey, I know a green witch who might want to get out of the city for a while, so here we are.”

That's a lot to hear all at once, and Zilla has to stop at the bottom of the steps up to Mrs. Brilley's building and stand there for a moment, making an apologetic face at a man who was going to slow to let her join foot traffic before she stopped. “Me? I may be a green witch, but I've never run a private farm before. They're very different from community gardens.”

“I know you know small business administration because you said they trained you on the books as part of your coven employment, and you definitely know the fields even if you've never done it large-scale. Honestly, Zill, I just need someone to scare away the deer and keep the business running. You'd get a month-long country vacation rent-free, and we can work out some pay besides.”

“I'm not worried about the money.” Zilla bites her lip, thinks about a summer spent outside the sweltering city, with more use than doing rounds that should rightly be spread among other members of the coven who need to do their service. “I have to ask the coven for leave, and if there's a coven or even a lone witch in your area, politics say I probably can't anyway.”

“Is that a subtle no, or should I start swaying you?”

A summer doing the same thing she's been doing for the past year, or a summer getting to grow things out of the city, where she's only been on brief trips. “Sway me,” she says.

“Then I'll start by saying I wouldn't have asked a witch to come here without checking on the politics, and the nearest coven is miles and miles away. Allerston used to have a lone witch, but she died six years back, so if your coven can spare you it shouldn't cause a territory dispute. It's the sparing bit I'm worried about.”

Zilla starts walking. Standing on the street while she has this conversation isn't going to get her home any faster, to her spare little coven-owned apartment in a much nicer part of town than she's ever lived in before. “I think they'll probably say yes, if you're right about the territory issues. I just need to bring up the right points about community outreach and expanding my skillset. As long as someone else is willing to take on our community garden we'll be fine, since that's my biggest project.”

“Any other green witches in your coven?”

“Not a lot, and nobody else fully coven-employed, but enough to run it, especially since they ran it before I came along.” Zilla checks her clock and speeds up a little, aiming for the nearest metro station. “Tell me about your crops for the year, though, I'm on my way home so you can give me a picture before I call leadership.”

Hess, ever obliging, does, and Zilla smiles as she walks and makes encouraging noises, listening to a litany of crops and growth schedules and plans that reminds her of late nights in college, sitting on his bed indulging in the only crop he had space to prioritize then, listening to him sketch out the plans for his future and bemoan the coven scholarship that kept her plans in Terian when he got maudlin.

“I should go,” she says when she's made it three stops on the train and is only a few blocks from putting up her feet for a while before checking on her hives. “Send me dates and details, and I'll let you know as soon as I get an answer from the coven.”

“Sell it hard, Zill, I'm going to be much happier leaving the farm if I know it's in your hands,” says Hess, and lets her say her goodbyes.

*

Properly, leave for coven-employed witches is a matter for the weekly coven meeting, discussed as new business, but in practical terms, it's the kind of thing the coven's council really hates being surprised with, so she calls Nia, her primary supervisor and the current elected head of the coven, that evening as she sits on her building's roof, and explains Hess's request.

Nia is the kind of woman who dances on the line between terrifying and motherly, less because she's a witch and more because she was the office manager at one of the local schools for twenty years before retiring to devote her time to the coven, and even though they go out for coffee most weeks and have spent plenty of professional time together, Zilla still gets a flutter of nerves whenever she asks her for something. The long silence on the phone line after she makes her explanation only makes it worse, but when Nia finally speaks, it's to say “It's a remarkably good idea, actually.”

“Is it?” Zilla asks, and winces. “I mean, it is, but I wasn't sure you would agree.”

“Obviously the council has to think it over, and we have to cover your duties, but that shouldn't be a problem. It's summer, so the witches in education will have extra time, and I've had a few people ask about expanding their duty rounds.”

“And the garden?”

“We may need to hire someone outside the coven to administrate part-time, but that's not a terrible loss, we've done it before. I'm most worried about your bees, but I may have a solution there.”

Zilla looks across her roof at her hives, all five of them thriving and beautiful and all hers, with the bees just going in for the night, wrapping up their own rounds like she wrapped up hers. She'll get her first harvest of the season soon, she thinks, just early drips from all of them, but she doesn't know about leaving them for a month. “I was worried about that too,” she admits.

“Happily, I was going to tell you at coffee this week that we've got a prospective scholarship student coming to meet with the coven this summer, and it looks from the dates you mentioned like her visit will mostly be while you're gone. I was going to ask you to mentor her, as our youngest coven employee, but perhaps I'll ask her to stay at your apartment and take care of your bees as rent.”

Zilla feels stupidly territorial over her bees, knowing how special her honey is, but if she wants to help Hess, it's not like she can haul five hives a hundred miles away and then back again in a month. They would revolt. “Is she a green witch?”

“Not primarily, but she does have some interests in that direction—she's planning to attend the veterinary school in the city and supplement her work there with witchery, so she should at least be competent with directions and not likely to scare easily.”

“Sounds like someone I'd like to get to know.” Zilla hesitates, but she has to offer. “Are you sure you don't want me to stick around? Mentoring is an important duty, especially if we've got interests in common.”

“She'll be around for a few days after your return, and I can always give her your number if she has questions before then for our youngest active witch.” Nia pauses, but Zilla doesn't have anything new to add, just reveling in the warmth that comes from being trusted with taking care of a younger witch. “I think this will be good for you. I often think your talents are wasted on the work we have you doing.”

Zilla winces, because it's something they do talk about, in their more serious meetings, when they talk about her goals, what she wants to do outside of the coven when all she's ever really wanted to be is a full-time witch and it's definitely making it hard to concentrate on a job search. But they're a busy city coven with plenty of witches happy to take on her duties, and usually they only employ witches who have retired from other work. It's a frequent argument with she and Nia, in as much as worry can be an argument, and she's provided some ammunition. “I know,” she says. She does, after all. “I think it will be good for me too.”

“Then there's really no reason for us to tell you no, provided there won't be any issues of territory. But you're going to get a taste of life as a lone countryside witch. A little rarer, these days, but not a bad thing to be, especially for a green witch. Just see how you like it.”

Probably a lot. Zilla is easygoing, she likes most things, and Hess has told her about his hometown, about some of the people, about the farm he loves and how funny his parents find it that they moved to a bigger town and their son went right back to the small one where he grew up. She's fond of it already, by proxy, and likes the picture of his life that he paints. It will be the longest she's ever spent out of Terian, too, and it's been too long since she had an adventure. But the thought of not coming back, stepping away from her home and her coven, using this as a chance to find something else, makes her stomach dip with anxiety. “I'm looking forward to it,” she assures Nia.

“Good,” says Nia, like she heard all of what Zilla was thinking and is reserving judgment on all of it. “We'll discuss it more at the meeting on Friday, and work forward from there.”

Zilla looks out across her rooftop, out at a city full of them, the green spaces where her bees bring back pollen, all of them bathed in the light of a particularly pink sunset, and squares her shoulders. She's not going to let herself be intimidated by talk of the future. It's going to be a month of adventure, and if it clarifies things, that's all the better, but it doesn't have to.

*

By Friday, Nia has clearly already looked into Allerston and discovered that the nearest witches are a coven of sisters twenty miles away who have never done more than a few charms for the town, since she chimes in with that information when Zilla stands to make her formal request.

With Nia in support, Zilla's request for leave is passed almost immediately, but she pays the price of being swarmed by her fellow witches when it's time for the potluck after the meeting, all of them full of questions about Hess and the farm and her bees.

She's pretty sure she hasn't been asked about her future this much since her last girlfriend ended things, and says so ruefully to one of the other witches in a one-on-one conversation, only to get a sympathetic laugh and the offer of a glass of wine, but it all feels celebratory, too, a lot of earnest hopes for Zilla's happiness and happy questions about what Hess is growing this season. It all feels strangely final, even though she's not supposed to leave for almost six weeks, but it feels good, too, all of them looking out for her and promising before anyone's even asked to look in on her bees, to take over community garden administration, divvying up her rounds between them. The community is the nicest thing about being in a coven, and Zilla basks in it for the rest of the night.

The six weeks that follow seem to slip by like they don't happen at all. She's on the phone with Hess three times a week, talking about his planting schedule, what local restaurants and shops he sells at, working out fair pay considering she won't be paying rent, talking about what support she'll need to offer his employees. She goes on her rounds and delegates duties to the community garden board and has several phone calls with Nessa, the veterinary student who will be staying in her apartment, who seems shy but happy to get instructions about her bees and hear what she does with them, and she tries to explain to her bees that someone different will be checking on them and they shouldn't sting strangers, to hopefully good effect.

Her last night before going, the coven throws her a party even though it's a Wednesday and they'll just have to meet again for business on Friday. They don't toast her or make speeches, which would feel awkward, too much like a permanent goodbye. It's just a meeting in their community space, her closest friends in the coven and some of the community garden board and even a few people from her duty rounds all there with food in hand, and a few with tokens to send her off with as well.

“You didn't have to do this,” says Zilla when she can catch Nia, a little choked up that one of the children from the community garden drew a portrait of her gardening (or so his mother assures her). “We could have just done an acknowledgment at the meeting last week.”

Nia smiles and shakes her head. “When there's an opportunity to feel sad, you should try to celebrate instead. What would you have done tonight otherwise? Worried about your bees?”

“Maybe.” She's missing them in advance, and worrying about the harvests she'll miss, the specificity she'll lose and the money she'll lose with it. But mostly she's jittering with nerves and excitement both, so Nia has a point. “I feel like I shouldn't be leaving.”

“People do, all the time. And they come back or don't. This isn't three hundred years ago, or even one. Once you're in a coven, it's not written in stone. And if you leave a coven, it's not written in stone that you can't come back. It's just a vacation. Or should I not have had a second honeymoon when I retired two years ago?”

Two years ago, Zilla was still finding her feet as a full member of the coven, still working on campus after graduation, but she does remember a party much like this for Nia and her husband, everyone's best efforts at making foods from the countries they planned to visit. Zilla's grandmother's flatbread recipe was very popular, from what she remembers, and she thinks she's only made it once since, and has a sudden pang of regret for not doing it more. “Of course you should have. It's not like I don't know that I'm being silly.”

“That's something, then.” Nia smiles at her, genuine and warm. “Enjoy yourself. If it clarifies things for you, good. If it doesn't, we'll be waiting for you here.”

Zilla smiles out at the room, the posters about local political movements stashed in between coven banners, Mrs. Brilley filling the plate of one of the garden kids with more and more sugar as her father winces, a group of her fellow witches in the corner complaining, from what she can tell, about some policy changes at the school their children all go to. “I'll be back.”

“Whatever makes you happiest,” Nia says, and pulls her over to talk with one of the local wizards who likes to buy Zilla's honey for his potions.

*

The train station, the next morning, is buzzing with activity like the hives she had to tear herself away from to make it with time to spare for her trip. Nia herself is looking after them until Nessa arrives to get to know the coven, and they can't be in better hands, and it's not like a hive of bees can get lonely, but she still misses them already, homesick more for them than for anything else she's leaving.

Three people, at her party, offered to drive her to the station, but Zilla came over on the subway, even if she regrets it a little and cheated with charms to make her luggage lighter. She has enough of it that she wonders if people are rolling their eyes as she goes to the slow rail hub, hauling three sturdy wooden crates of honey jars packed in wool behind her on a cart and guiding a bicycle beside her with her free hand, stopping to lean it against her hip while she brings up her ticket on her phone. Everything else, at least, she mailed to Hess a week ago, even if it means that she's been wearing an odd assortment of garments for the last week.

The rail stop closest to Allerston is the farthest stop for the local slow rail and the nearest stop for the high speed rail. Hess offered to pay for either ticket, and laughed at her when she picked the slow rail without hesitation, but Zilla hasn't traveled much, and she wants to see the scenery change slowly, not a blur of buildings and colors as she goes by. It will take the whole morning, with all the stops, but she doesn't mind that, and she's smiling when she scans her ticket and goes into her compartment, leaving her bicycle with the porter in charge of awkward and oversized luggage and hauling her crates to her seat, where they're going to bump into her knees for the next few hours.

There's only one other person in her compartment so far, an elderly man with a stylish hat who gives her a look that's equal parts exasperated and amused when she smiles at him but tips his hat obligingly. “Traveling far today?” she asks.

For a moment, she thinks she'll get a short answer and a lot of awkwardness, since his seat is right across the aisle from hers, but then he huffs out a laugh. “Most of the way down the line. It would have been faster to take the fast rail and then double back on one of the local trains from there, but I'm too old to haul my luggage around.”

“I'm going to the end of the line, and I only have the excuse of liking the scenery,” she says, and tilts her head, pondering the set of his shoulders, the bags under his eyes, the instrument case held firmly between his feet. “Would you like some bread and honey? I didn't have time for breakfast before I left home, and it's always better shared.”

By the time the train pulls out of the station, he's firmly pulled her into the seat next to him, with the permission of the people who were meant to be their seatmates, and Zilla has pulled out a small jar of the honey harvested from the first spring flowers as early in the morning as possible, a pale gold and just the right note of sweet for when she needs to feel a little lighter and happier. It's almost too much for her, already giddy with nerves and adventure, but it makes Tal, her new seatmate, smile and relax.

Tal's stop is only two before hers, and in the hours before, he tells her all about the store where he used to make handles for tools, and the jazz trumpet he played on weekends and now plays whenever he can, and the jazz festival he's going to visit. She tells him, in turn, about her bees and her rounds and her month on Hess's farm.

“Enjoy your festival,” she says as they pull into his station. “I'll be listening for you on the local radio, so whatever you end up doing there, play loud.”

Tal laughs and kisses her on the cheek. “And you tell me where I can buy that honey of yours, and enjoy your adventure—do something reckless, or go searching for unicorns. You're the perfect age for adventures.”

“Everyone is,” says Zilla, and makes sure the lid of the jar of honey she gave him is on tight. “And you can buy it at the farmer's market in Allerston for the next month, but for now, this goes with you.”

He shakes his head at her. “I can't take that.”

“Nonsense. It was meant for you. And it's a small jar anyway, I'm not losing much on it.” She presses it into his hand. “But if you meet anyone who feels sad at this festival, you can share it with them, and consider that your payment.”

Tal smiles. “Do you at least have a business card, so I can recommend you to my friends?”

“Contact information on the label,” Zilla assures him. “I do know how to run a business.”

The train pulls into the station, which does have plenty of cheerful banners welcoming people visiting for the festival, and people disembarking onto the platform all seem to have instrument cases like Tal's, and she urges him up and out of his seat before he misses his opportunity and sets herself to looking out her window. Tal turns around as soon as he's off and waves before the station swallows him up, and Zilla waves back and waits until they pull away.

So far from Terian, all the towns feel small, and they sprawl less, so they've barely been traveling a few minutes before they reach fields and forests, the glimpse of a solar array on one hillside, lakes and ponds dotting the landscape, the patchwork fields of bigger farms in the distance, in varying shades of brown or green depending on the crop and how far along it is.

They pull into the last station on their route in the middle of the kind of drenching rain that can't last very long. Zilla saw the dark smudged clouds approaching as they traveled down the tracks, and feels pleased and inconvenienced both that she has to navigate herself off the train to an inevitable soaking before she reaches the shelter of the station proper.

The last stop of a train always feels more chaotic than any of the ones in the middle. In the middle, people have to get on and off fairly quickly, and their luggage needs to be stowed accessibly. For people who get on at the start and off at the end of a journey, though, luggage always takes a while, and Zilla has to huddle in the door of her compartment for ten minutes before her bicycle arrives.

By then, at least, the rain is slacking off, turning into the gentle kind that she wouldn't mind lasting forever if she didn't love the sunshine just as much, and Zilla gets everything together and goes looking for Hess. It's a decent-sized station for a small city, and she knows she has almost another hour in Hess's truck ahead of her, so she doesn't try very hard to find him quickly.

In the end, he finds her first, and she only knows it when he shouts her name across the echoing space of the station atrium. The second he calls, though, she can find him with no trouble at all, a tall lanky figure capped off with wild dark curls, his arm waving over his head like he thinks she can't see him.

Much as she wants to run over to him and into his arms, Zilla has to tow her luggage, and when she's halfway, Hess seems to realize why she's not going quicker, and he trots over and balances her bicycle easily against his side so he can give her one of his enthusiastic hugs, rocking her back and forth. Getting a hug from Hess is always a little bit like getting one from a daddy-long-legs, all long thin limbs and very little cushion, but it's always comforting too, and Zilla leans in and lets out a sigh. “Really good to see you,” she says into his shirt, smiling to herself on finding that it's a plaid flannel and that he's clearly leaning into the image of a farmer.

“You too.” He pulls back just far enough to smile at her. “How was the trip? What can I take?”

“You lead the bicycle, I've got the honey and my personal bag if you've got the door.” He makes a face, probably wanting to be hospitable, but he starts walking amiably enough, bicycle on one side and Zilla on the other, the two of them stumbling along for a few steps with his arm over her shoulders before they have to silently admit that they have too much to carry to deal with that. “And the trip was nice, lots of scenery and I made friends with my seat mate and gave him some honey. He's playing at the jazz festival a little way away, and he told me to go unicorn-hunting.”

“Of course you did,” says Hess. “I'm excited to try your honey outside of my holiday packages, while I'm around. Though the unicorns I can't provide.”

“I'll send some on the plane with you too, if you like,” she offers, and he laughs and turns her down as he holds the door to let her out into the lot.

There are plenty of cars there, but she sees his right away, an old light blue truck with the bed stuffed with crates and the half-familiar logo for Deep Roots Farm stenciled on the side. Sure enough, he starts steering in that direction. “Come on over—you drive, right? Because this is yours for the summer and if you crash it I'll be mad, it's my baby.”

Zilla laughs. “Yes, I can, some coven duties include driving people to places outside the city. Your truck is safe.” When they get there, Hess loads her bicycle in the bed and then starts taking her boxes to nestle them in safely among his. It looks, from the state of them, like he finished his rounds before coming to pick her up, since the boxes are all open and empty. “I wish we were spending more time together before you leave, it doesn't seem fair that I'm staying at your place but not getting to see you.”

Now that they're unencumbered, Hess gives her another hug, a much more satisfying one. “I might just kidnap you. Everybody's going to love you, and I could always use the help.”

Zilla squeezes and lets him go. “Let's get through this month first, and I want to know all about running Deep Roots, but while you drive me there, I just want to hear about how you are.”

“As long as I get to hear how you are,” he agrees, and climbs into the driver's seat, having to duck a little not to hit his head on the rim of the door, which has Zilla beaming to herself as she gets in.

When the truck purrs to life, there's a blast of sound, the rousing chorus of some song Zilla mostly associates with coven barbeques and Nia's husband insisting on choosing the radio station, before Hess turns it down to barely a whisper. With that as a soundtrack and the road ahead of them, it's easy to fall into old patterns of conversation. Zilla talks about her bees and her rounds and the coven and her occasional dates, all the little elements of her life without the difficult parts, at least not to start. Hess, in his turn, tells her about the farm, about the roles he's taking in town, about the man he dated for six weeks at the start of the year before they admitted it wasn't anything and how farming doesn't allow much time at all for finding people to date who don't live within five miles of him already.

They travel pretty quickly out of the town outskirts the station was in, onto rolling country roads, not much traffic and all sorts of intriguing side roads that disappear into forest as more and more of the land is taken up with it. In between, there are towns, and plains, and farms, but mostly there are trees, more than Zilla is used to seeing, not curated park trees either. While they drive, Hess occasionally interrupts their conversation to point out a road that leads to a restaurant he supplies, or to a farm that travels to Allerston's farmer's market, or a conservation area where she can go birdwatching if the fancy strikes her, introducing her to the community so gradually it almost surprises her when they drive to the edge of a little village and he says “Here we are! Most of the roads in town center aren't designed for cars, so in town you definitely want that bike, or the farm's little tractor if you're hauling a lot.”

Zilla sticks her head out the window like a dog to get a better view of Allerston, or at least the center of it. It's a charming little downtown, built around a central park where the farmer's market is held every Sunday, circled around with stone lanes that are scattered with houses and shops. It's not the huge array of things to see and do that Zilla is used to in the city, but it's pretty, and the rain and clouds have cleared enough to give her a lovely sunlit view of it.

“It's beautiful,” she says, like he doesn't already know it, and he grins at her. “Where's the farm?”

“A few minutes out of town, I just wanted to take you in through downtown so you could see it and fall in love.” He turns down a road and takes them away, through roads lined with houses with yards, and then a road only dotted with houses and forest, and finally down a dirt driveway lined with fields, flowers near the driveway and other crops farther out, everything taking advantage of the space, stretching out to the woods on one side and fading into a grassy orchard on the other. His house, at the end of the drive, is probably objectively not very large, but compared to city buildings that seem like they're holding their breath not to get in their neighbors' way, it seems to sprawl, an addition here and a garage there showing that it's been around for a while.

Hess is all beaming pride as soon as she shows admiration, and they abandon all of Zilla's belongings in the truck to go inside right away, since he claims he wants to serve her some lemonade before he takes her around the fields.

He's been living here for almost two years, but it's still a bachelor home, Zilla can tell that right away. She can tell where people tend to go in the house by how much it looks like someone lives there: the kitchen and dining room are fully decorated, art on the walls, clean and organized and painted. The living room is more lived in, but less decorated, stuffed with ancient furniture and all the storage made of crates and bricks. By the time she gets to the upstairs, the only room that's really decorated is the spare room she'll be staying in, decorated to what she remembers as his mother's taste, so probably it's where he puts his parents when they visit.

“So who do you have over for dinners?” she asks when she's ascertained that the clothes she sent made it, as well as the books and parts of her witch kit she trusts to travel without her.

Hess laughs, standing in the doorway to the spare room. He's always been good at that, waiting to be invited, even if it's his own house and Zilla's the guest. “Of course you guessed that. My employees, mostly, every other week or so. I told them that under no circumstances are they to come here and beg you for food, though.”

Zilla frowns at him. “Of course I'm going to feed them, especially if they're used to it. You're making a community here, I'm not going to interrupt. Besides, I like feeding people.”

“I'll leave that up to you—I just didn't want them asking if you weren't ready.”

She hasn't seen him in too long, but Zilla feels an overwhelming rush of fondness, a reminder that Hess is one of her favorite people, the brother she never had. She pats the bed, and sits down herself to wait for him to come in. “Tell me about them,” she says, and leans against his shoulder while he does.

*

Her days with Hess go by quicker than she wants them to. They spend the first night drinking wine on his porch, talking about lives and dreams and other things that leave her feeling melancholy, but the next day is sunny and his employees, all four of them, show up bright and early, ready to weed the appropriate beds and more importantly size up their temporary boss.

Zilla likes them right away, which makes sense for anyone chosen by Hess. It's clear they're all good friends, casually affectionate in the way of people who are close, always someone's arm around someone else's shoulders, sharing possessions around depending on who needs a drink and who needs sun protection at any given moment.

Lumi is the oldest, by about a year, and the undisputed ringleader. She doesn't suggest all the plans they chat about for after work, but the rest of them look for her nods and listen to them, and her sunglasses are the only possession that doesn't get swapped around at all. Any instructions Hess gives to people specifically get done by that person, but instructions he gives to the group are delegated by Lumi, and it would make Zilla inclined to dislike her if she didn't delegate herself the least fun and interesting tasks more often than not.

Mara and Gil are cousins who might as well be siblings, full of in-jokes and speaking glances. Mara, from what Zilla has gathered, is one of Lumi's best friends, and is the one who got all of them working at the farm, because she talks about starting a nursery and gardening supply store a lot. Gil, on the other hand, doesn't seem to care as much, and mostly just wants to spend time with his friends and spend his breaks in the shade, sprawled dramatically on the ground. When Zilla makes them all butter cookies on their first afternoon together, he eats nearly half of them.

They all refer to Shay as the baby of the group, but it only seems to be by a few months, and Shay seems to take it with grace and the occasional roll of their eyes. Shay tends to follow Lumi around with the kind of adoration that means they either want to be just like her or would really like to date her, and doesn't blush or duck away when being introduced to Zilla but still seems shy.

“I think we'll all get along,” Zilla decides when they leave before dinner on Saturday with plans to go out for ice cream and then probably do something they don't care to tell adults about, since they were cutting off half-sentences when talking about the rest of their plans. “As long as I get Lumi on my side, right?”

Hess laughs and hands her a cider out of his fridge, in a plain bottle that means it's one of his own from the orchard. “I should have known you'd have detailed personality profiles on all my employees by now. Yes, I call her my assistant manager, you'll notice in the accounting that her pay is a little higher for the managing duties. I've told her about you, and she thinks you're 'super spice,' which apparently means she approves.”

Zilla clinks her bottle against his. “Well, if they're on my side, I think I can do this.”

“I know you can,” he says, and drags her inside to enlist her help making dinner.


	2. Week One

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hess leaves, and Zilla settles in--and meets a pegasus. And more importantly, the pegasus farmer.

Hess's last full day in town is Sunday, the day of Allerston's weekly farmer's market, and he and Zilla are up early, packing crates with honey and cider and vegetables. Sometimes one or two of his employees will ask to take on a Sunday when they need extra money, he explains to her, but mostly it's just him, and it's one of his favorite things about the community.

Zilla, after a few days without the variety of company she's used to in Terian, reassures him that she's going to feel the same about it and elbows him when he looks dubious. After a second, he seems to remember that she's never minded getting out to see people a day in her life, and goes back to packing things up.

In the end, while she'll have to take things over in the tractor, with two of them and two carts, they can take their bicycles over to the farmer's market, since the stalls are stored in town from week to week. They arrive at the same time as several other yawning people, all of whom greet Hess by name, some with hugs and questions about his upcoming trip, and all of whom ask who Zilla is and then say warmly they've heard about her. Whether it's truth or welcoming fiction, it gets her smiling while they set up their stall, laying everything out, chalking the week's prices onto their boards, making sure nothing got bruised in transit.

There are a dozen of them set up by the time people start to arrive, the early birds with their baskets there to get the best produce before the dew is even off the grass. Hess tells her, as the first few customers start browsing, that they can get as high as twenty in the very height of summer, if some of the school clubs have things to sell too, but that mostly they're the most faithful dozen.

After the first few customers, though, they don't really have time to chat. Zilla is busy introducing herself to everyone, sharing recipes for radishes and greens and rhubarb, and explaining her honey a dozen times over, since whenever someone asks about the new display, Hess defers to her. She sells four jars before the market has been open for an hour, which is an auspicious start for the month.

It's a beautiful morning, but Zilla doesn't have the attention to focus on the stall next to theirs, full of bouquets to buy, or the shadow of some strange bird passing overhead that she catches and then loses before she can look up.

The next time she gets a breath, it's because the early morning crowd is done, and Hess claims they won't get too many customers between then and when people finish lazy Sunday morning breakfasts and chores to come see what's there, so she leans against the stall counter and looks around at the people who are still there, the other workers talking about people and events she doesn't know, the few customers browsing vegetables and baked goods and meat and eggs.

She's just thinking she should advise Hess to get some chickens when her attention catches on a woman wandering her way down the row, with a leather satchel instead of a wicker basket holding everything she's buying. She's their age, tall, brown hair braided down her back, and she's just wearing jeans and plaid, both worn out and worked in, but she's still pretty enough to catch Zilla's eye. “Who's that?” she asks Hess, as quietly as she can.

Hess looks at her, looks at the woman working her way slowly in their direction, and frowns at her. “No.”

“What? I'm just asking her name, I need to get to know the community. You've told me about everyone else. Come on. What does she do? Is she married? Would she like to be?”

Hess laughs, but the smile fades quickly. “Hey, she's great, but not her, okay? Not the place to explain it, but you have to trust me on this.”

Zilla frowns, ready to ask a few questions, because she's never known Hess to try to rein in her flirting, and if he knows this woman enough to feel protective of her she seems like someone he should have mentioned before, but she can't match her to any of the friends he talks about when they talk or that he mentions online. Before she can open her mouth, though, the woman skips over the flower stall, which puts her squarely in front of them, so Zilla has to change tacks immediately to “Good morning, how are you?”

“Hello,” she says, in a much quieter voice than Zilla was imagining, a little husky, and then looks over Zilla's shoulder at Hess with what seems like relief. “This is the friend you were talking about at dinner last week, right?”

“Who taught either of you manners?” he asks, but he doesn't sound too annoyed about it. “Yeah, this is Zilla, who you should trust with all your vegetable needs. Zilla, this is Ardith, who I went to school with. Ari, did you ride Peony in? I was hoping to get a chance to say goodbye to my favorite.”

“Parsley, she needed the exercise, but I'll pass your goodbyes on,” says Ardith, and smiles for the first time Zilla has seen.

Zilla likes people, and likes women, and likes flirting when they seem open to it, but she respects and loves Hess too much to do it with abandon now. Still, she has to admit to herself that it's a little pang not to respond to that smile, tentative and shy as it is, the way it makes her gray eyes stop looking grave and start shining. “Do you have horses?” she says, the safest thing she can say. Ardith blinks at her, like she's surprised Zilla is still there when she seems to be trying to pretend there's not a stranger there, and Zilla winces. “Sorry, I'm nosy.”

“No, not at all. I just forget that people are new.” She has a measured way of speaking, like she's thinking about every word. “I'm on Raised Wings at the edge of town, it's a pegasus farm.”

“Pegasus?” Zilla asks, her voice going embarrassingly high with childish delight, and turns accusingly to Hess. “You didn't tell me there was a pegasus farm here!”

“I didn't know you were interested in them,” he says, eyebrows raised.

Zilla sighs at him and turns to Ardith, who at least seems less like she wants to run away at the sight of a stranger now. “I've lived in Terian my whole life and have really only seen them from a distance or in movies, it's amazing knowing I'm in the same town as one for once.” She cranes her neck to look over Ardith's shoulder. “And you said there's one here?”

“She's tethered behind the store, the wingspan doesn't fit in this area very well.”

Much as Zilla wants to insist on abandoning the stall to go meet her, Ardith is just barely relaxing and she's supposed to be learning the ropes from Hess, not running off to fulfill childhood fantasies. Instead, she smiles at Ardith, trying to keep it relaxed enough not to intimidate her. “That makes sense. I'll just have to hope I see you and a pegasus or two around in the next month. In the meantime, what can we get for you?”

“What's best?” Ardith asks, which is Zilla's favorite question. Hess seems inclined to stand back and let her handle things, even though Ardith is his friend, so Zilla goes through what's most plentiful and what tastes best, Ardith trailing behind her and generally following her recommendations until she stops in front of Zilla's display of honey. “This is new.”

“It's from my hives.”

“In the city?” Ardith asks, with her nose wrinkled and the kind of surprise that Zilla has decided to find charming instead of annoying so she doesn't spend the whole month rolling her eyes.

Hess, at the front of the stall helping an old man choose between some of his tea blends, snorts a little, probably because he's had people asking him about his time in Terian ever since he came back from it too. Zilla just smiles at Ardith. “Yes. I'm a green witch. Plenty of people have hives in the city, ninety percent of our rooftops have some kind of green space, but mine are the best and smartest, and I do specialty honey.”

“I've seen people sell wildflower honey, or clover honey. That kind of thing, then?”

Zilla beams at her. Given the opportunity, she can talk about the honey all day. “Yes, but more specific than that, since I can communicate pretty well with my hives. So there's honey only from the first spring flowers and honey from the last autumn ones, honey made from nectar collected right after rain and honey made out of only yellow flowers, or the flowers they deem the prettiest. I even have one that's only made from nectar from poisonous flowers, which isn't poisonous itself, I promise, but which I still mostly only recommend to be sold for spellcraft.”

Ardith frowns at the display, maybe reading the labels where Zilla has the shorter versions of many of those options, and more besides. Her batches of each kind of honey aren't large, but that only makes them more precious, to her mind. “Do they taste different?” she finally asks.

“If you try them enough, yes. It's like wine. I don't know a thing about it, but people who do can taste almost anything in it. I can taste almost anything in my honey. And even if you can't taste the differences, they're witch made, so they tend to be good for certain uses. Mixed with the right tea, or the right bread, or just the right person, they're very powerful.”

For a moment, she thinks Ardith is going to be one of the ones who doesn't like the thought of it, or who takes it as a challenge and won't let herself be helped by witching because she's too busy waiting to be impressed. It would disappoint her, in one of Hess's friends, but it's not all that uncommon, in her experience. “What would you recommend, then?” She pulls out one of the packet's of Hess's tea, an herbal blend full of plants for strength and clear-mindedness, though Hess is practical enough that other than the obvious plants he mostly blends for flavor and it might well be coincidence. “For this, say?”

Zilla is a good enough witch to know that means “for me” and not for the tea, and a good enough witch not to mention it, and she ponders her shelves of honey, carefully looking at them and not Ardith but still going back over her face while she does, the dark circles under her eyes, how grave and nervous she seems, how Hess is really the only person she's stopped to talk much to. Strength and clear-mindedness is a lot to ask from someone without something gentler to go with it, especially for someone so clearly exhausted. She considers a few options before pulling out a sample jar, just a few cups of tea worth, one of her favorites when she's sick or exhausted, a late-summer blend that always leaves her feeling warm and comforted, without making her more tired than she already is. “I think this will be a good match.”

Ardith looks at it like she maybe expects it to bite her, but after a second she takes it. “How much, then?”

Zilla waves a hand. “It's just a sample. If you like it, next week you can come back and buy a full jar and recommend it to anyone who asks, and we'll call it even.” Ardith opens her mouth to object, and Zilla smiles and shakes her head. “It's a gift. I'm new to town and trying to curry favor, especially with women who may be able to introduce me to a pegasus or three before my time here is up.”

A second later, Ardith takes the honey and tucks it into her basket, mouth pulled tight. “Thank you, then.”

“Is that all?” Hess asks with false cheer, and Zilla hides her wince in straightening her jars of honey, which plenty of curious people have been touching all morning while he lets Ardith pay and escape the stall. There's another customer, and then another, and then it's the late morning rush and Zilla only has the chance to look up in time to see a large winged shape flying over in the middle of all of it.

*

Later, back at the farm, with the little that was left over from the market stored and ready to move on to its next destination, Hess and Zilla sit on the porch, looking out over his fields and drinking more of his cider, just fizzy enough to tickle her nose.

“So,” she says when they've talked about everything else and the omission is starting to gnaw a pit in her stomach, “you trust me with your farm, but not your friend. That worries me.”

Hess puts his cider down immediately so he can put a hand on her knee. “Shit, no, sorry, I just didn't have time to do the full explanation while I was there.”

“Okay.” She puts her cider down too and turns to face him. “I'm listening. You don't need to tell me someone else's secrets, but I'm not used to you telling me who I can and can't flirt with.”

“A town this size, she doesn't have a lot of secrets, which is part of it. Mostly it's that I want you two to be friends, and if you flirt with her, she is going to turn tail and run pretty much immediately.”

“Bad breakup?” It feels like more than that, but sometimes asking the wrong question gets the right answer.

“No, just … her parents were in a bad flying accident a few years ago, a storm came up out of nowhere while her mother was on a distance flight and her father went after her. Her father got pretty injured, and her mother died, and Ardith left college to take care of him and pretty much hasn't talked to anyone except to run errands since. It's a miracle I convinced her to have dinner last week, I pretty much invoked senior formal date privileges.”

Zilla's instinct to make everything lighter and happier makes her want to ask to see a picture, to tease him for whatever haircut he had then and coo over whatever they're wearing. She doesn't want Hess to spend his last night home thinking about bad memories, a tragedy that must have touched the whole town. But he also mentioned it because he thinks it's important for her to know, and she can't make light of it. “That sounds awful for everyone. Should I have known that before? If it happened in college you must have mentioned it, if a friend of yours lost her mother.”

“It happened over a summer, I might not have mentioned.” He sighs and takes a swig of his cider. “Maybe I'm overprotective of her. And I'm not trying to control your life, or hers. But I don't want you to break each other's hearts. I think you'll like each other, but if you want something with her, and you talk her into it without her running away … you're still leaving in a month, Zill.”

Zilla's happily dated women for a month before one or the other of them had something else to do, calling them away, and it's never really hurt her before, but she can understand that not everyone works that way. She'd rather hear Ardith say so herself, but she trusts Hess enough not to set out on something that would be fun but not necessary for her and that could hurt someone else. She'll just have to enjoy looking at Ardith if she runs into her in town. “Understood. I don't want to hurt anyone either.”

“Okay. That's all I wanted to hear,” says Hess, and if his change of subject is transparent, it's his last night at home. Zilla lets him get away with it.

*

Hess argues about it, but Zilla puts her foot down the next morning and says she's in charge of his life, and his truck, for the next month, and if his truck is going to the airport anyway, he may as well be in it instead of calling a taxi and paying just to see her there. She leaves instructions for Lumi and the others about what they should do while she's gone and tells them to have some honey toast if they need a break from the heat and drives out to the airport, on the opposite side of the nearest city than the train station she arrived at. It's a long drive, and they're both sleepy with the morning, so mostly they listen to music and watch the scenery pass, and Zilla muses over the different things they're seeing, her a place she hardly knows but is going to learn better and he a place he knows well and isn't going to see for a while.

“I wish I were just here to visit you for a month,” she says when she parks. “I hate that you're leaving.”

Hess grabs her hand and leans back against his seat. “I kept thinking about inviting you, but I wasn't sure witch etiquette would let you if there wasn't a reason. I think you'll really love it in Allerston, and I wish I could be around to make it easier for you.”

“I'll be fine. I'm just going to miss you.”

“Well, now that we know you can get away, you'll just have to come back. Shorter visits, if that's what the coven will let you do. We have a great harvest festival come autumn.”

Zilla wonders, for a second, what he's heard when she's been talking about the coven, since he seems to think they're a lot stricter than they are. Or maybe that her sense of duty is strict, which is at least more true. “I probably can't do another month, but a long weekend, or even a week, should be fine, unless you get a witch between then and now.”

“I'll hold you to that.” He makes a face. “I should get in there, and you should really get back to town, I trust the kids but it's still your first day, you should go frown on their youthful high spirits like the boss you are.”

“Sure, old man.” She drags him across the gearshift to hug him, and he lets himself be dragged. “Learn absolutely everything. You've got my blessings. And some honey mostly made out of flowers from my neighbor's tea garden, which should keep you alert. And I'll see you in a month.”

“Have fun,” he commands into her shoulder. “I know you'll do great, so I want you to promise to have fun.”

“I'm going to. I promise.” She shoves gently at his arm. “Go on, you have a flight to catch. Send me a message when you get on the flight, and again when you get there. And then just all the time.”

“Try and stop me,” he says, and leans away from her, hand on the door handle. “I feel like I should have some wise last minute advice.”

Zilla laughs. “Get out, you've never been wise a day in your life.”

After a few seconds, he does, and Zilla finds that her smile is suddenly more pasted on than real, but she keeps it there while he goes to the back to get out his suitcase before coming up to tap on the window until she rolls it down for him. “You send me messages too. I don't want to have to interrogate you.”

“Regular reports on the farm and on me,” she promises. “Now go.”

Hess takes her at her word, and a minute later the airport swallows him up. Zilla sits for a minute in the parking lot, lets herself feel bereft and overwhelmed and anxious for a minute, makes a note to call Nia later, and starts the truck to head back to Allerston. She takes the long way back, even if she needs to get back to supervise Hess's employees, but she doesn't think they mind.

They all seem a little melancholy when she gets back, and she knows how fond they all are of Hess, so she makes them all lemonade before sitting down with them to sort through produce and make a plan for the rest of the week, and from their smiles, she thinks it helps.

*

Zilla's first full day in charge of Hess's farm is mostly spent making deliveries. She leaves Lumi, Shay, Mara, and Gil weeding the onions and fills crates with everything that's picked and ready to take around to the local restaurants Hess has contracts with. Tuesdays are one of his scheduled days to deliver, so it's not like she's striking out and doing something new and daring, but it's handy for making her feel in charge of her own life, going around meeting everyone and chatting with various chefs and owners of restaurants, cafes, markets, and everywhere else that might conceivably want a vegetable.

On her way back from the farthest-flung location, she calls Nia, who picks up with a warm greeting. “Your friend left yesterday, didn't he? How are you feeling about that?”

“A little sad,” Zilla admits. “And a little overwhelmed, suddenly being in charge, but I think I'll like it.”

“I think so too, you've always enjoyed running the community garden. Tell me more, though.”

Zilla obligingly does, tossing in mentions of the scenery she passes—local parkland, an antiques shop with a statue of a unicorn out front, one of the cafes she left greens and garlic scapes at—in between talking about Hess's employees, the farmer's market, the town and the people and everything she has to learn. “I do think I'll like it here,” she says in the end. “I already do, it's just hard to remember that in between the being overwhelmed.”

“And everyone seems to like you so far?”

One of the markets was run by a grandmotherly woman who started calling her “sweetheart” within a minute of Zilla's arrival, the chef of one of the restaurants invited her for a cup of tea, ordered a gallon of honey taste untasted, and told her all about his husband, and Lumi went so far yesterday as to say that she's faster picking rhubarb than Hess is, which is all more of an honor than she could have imagined. She's always thought of places like this as insular, something beautiful she could only see from the outside, but if that's true, nobody's ever told the residents of Allerston, or they just love Hess that much. “They really do.”

“Then I'd say you'll do fine. You've always done well when you're socially supported, and I bet you'll get a lot of that there.”

“Yes. It's a different kind of support from the coven, but I don't mind so far, anyway.”

“And if you miss the coven, you can always call me,” Nia assures her, and they only talk for a few more minutes before hanging up.

*

“So, my mom heard you're a witch,” Shay says that afternoon, shuffling their feet awkwardly while everyone else talks loudly about their plans to go to a nearby river for a swim, arguing about who has to bring the snacks and whether Gil really did see a snapping turtle last time. “I'm supposed to ask if ...” They straighten up, and when they speak again, it's a formal singsong, obviously memorized. “If you'll graciously consider some charms for the family and bless them with your magic, in return for the price you choose.”

Zilla tries to hide her smile, charmed at the old-fashioned phrasing, which she mostly hears from the more elderly people she sees on her rounds in Terian. Shay is taking it very seriously, probably drilled by a mother who hasn't had a witch in her territory for a while. Maybe the last witch was formal, or maybe she just wants to impress the new one. “Your mother is welcome to call me. It's my honor to provide blessings for the community that's taken me in so kindly.” It's not quite the formal response, but she doesn't care about that and hopes nobody expects her to.

“Great,” says Shay, obviously relieved. “She really hates the smell of mothballs and our charm to replace them has been worn out for like two years.”

Zilla laughs. “I can definitely do something about that. Do have her call me, you've got my number.” She tilts her head at the other three, all piling into Mara's car. “Go on, you've done your duty, I can safely report to your mother that you're a polite young person who observed all the formalities.”

Shay bobs a nod that's halfway to a bow while Zilla tries to keep looking serious and responsible and then escapes to get into the back of Mara's car, already taking their phone out, probably to tell their mother she can call Zilla to ask about mothballs.

Sure enough, an hour later, while Zilla is puzzling through a recipe for some slightly late asparagus, which she's never had occasion to cook before, Shay's mother calls, and by the end, Zilla's been asked for three different charms, had to dredge up three different formal responses to formal questions from the back of her mind, and promised that she's happy to make charms all month for anyone who needs them, with the understanding that her responsibilities to Hess and his farm come first. The matter of price is more delicate, though. By tradition, witches barter, but Zilla isn't going to be in town long enough for owed favors and chores to mean much for her, and she doesn't really need meals or materials with a whole farm providing for her. In the end, they settle on an herb-drying rack, custom sized, since Shay's mother does carpentry, and Zilla's made much worse bargains.

When they hang up, Zilla is energized and pleased and ready to get started working, but Shay's mother takes her at her word that she's happy to make more charms and wastes no time passing the word on, because she gets two more calls that night, and ends up with promises for a hand-knit sweater and a tune-up for her bicycle.

The next day, after a morning of hard work and then a distracted lunch of returning calls requesting more charms made while she abandoned her phone to weed, Zilla goes to the general store. Some charms are more effective when made with local ingredients, and she doesn't want to use Hess's pantry for supplies for others.

The owner, a canny old man who walks with a beautifully carved cane, greets her promptly with a request for renewal of his charms and the practical and slightly-daring-for-the-country offer of a gift certificate to his store in return, which she happily accepts before she starts wandering the aisles looking for the right ingredients for her list of charms.

Every witch uses different ingredients for her charms, which is what makes them witches and not wizards, if you ask a great many practitioners from both sides of the divide. Zilla's not sure it's as intrinsic as that, but it's certainly true, and it means every witch can choose her own level of practicality versus magic every time she makes a charm. She fills her basket with herbs and spices and cleaning products and a few craft supplies, though she has plenty of those in her witch kit and doesn't need many more, and rounds a corner to pick up some things to eat and nearly runs into Ardith.

“Oh, it's you!” says Ardith, so surprised that Zilla can't tell if it's happy or annoyed surprise.

Zilla backs up a step, adjusts her grip on her basket, thinks of Hess's worries, and smiles. “Hello there. Picking a few things up?”

Ardith lifts her basket, illustrating that that's obviously true, showing a glimpse of milk and some kind of spiced popcorn mix on the top of it. Today, her hair is pinned neatly and severely against her head, and she looks just as tired as she did at the farmer's market. “And you? You're settling in well?”

“Yes, though I'm missing Hess terribly.” She lifts her own basket. “I'm picking up supplies for some charms.”

“I've heard you're blessing the community with magic.” Ardith frowns down at her basket. “Thank you for the honey, by the way. It—helped. Very much.” When she looks up again, there's determination in her eyes, and Zilla has been a witch long enough to know this expression, the one that means there's a problem she wants solved, one that's hurting her, and she's decided to overcome her pride to ask. Zilla takes a few sidesteps away from the register and any prying ears, and Ardith follows before she speaks. “I know you're busy with Deep Roots. Are charms the only witching you plan to do?”

Zilla tilts her head, considering. “That depends on what kind of witching you're asking for.”

“I don't really know. But I don't think a charm.” Ardith frowns. “Do you want to come out to the farm this weekend? It will be easier to explain there. And … if you were serious, about wanting to get to know a pegasus, and maybe ride one, maybe you'd consider that your price?”

“I have to know what I'm doing first, but that is something I want.” Normally, the coven doesn't accept consultations without knowing what they're consulting about, but this isn't a coven visit. Zilla can make her own rules. And if it's something that she doesn't want to do, something that makes her think less of Ardith, then she can always say no, and she will still have met a pegasus.

“I know this is irregular, and I'm not phrasing it all right—”

“I don't care about the phrasing. Everyone's being really sweet to use it, but I'm from a city coven, we don't tend to care as much.” Zilla sighs. “And I don't love you being mysterious, but you're Hess's friend, so I trust that you're not going to ask me for poison or a love potion.”

Ardith winces and rears back a little. “Do people actually do that?”

“Not to me yet, but every witch gets a story about one or the other eventually. I am really hoping you aren't mine, so that's a reassuring response.” Zilla hitches her basket up on her arm. “This weekend should be okay, though. I have the market on Sunday. Saturday, maybe?”

“Saturday. Is morning okay?”

Hess's employees don't come in on weekends, and she won't have much to do but water if it doesn't rain in the days between, so Zilla nods, and stops second-guessing Ardith's wants and motivations long enough to settle that she'll come over at half past nine and to get directions out to her farm, not as far from Hess's as she's expecting, before they part to finish their shopping.

*

“Oh, hello, I didn't expect you to pick up for a strange number!”

Zilla, with her phone precariously between her ear and her shoulder while she measures out balsam for a charm, can't help rolling her eyes a little, because she's only been in charge of Hess's farm for a few days and she's already always expecting her phone to ring. Shay's mother opened the floodgates, and she has a dozen clients now, as well as Ardith's not-yet-explained request. “I've had people calling me about charms. Can I help you with one, maybe?”

“Oh right, you're a witch!” The woman on the other end of the call produces that information with distracted cheer. “That's what Annie Hallow said when I asked if Shay had your number to share, since Hessel forgot to give it to me before he left.”

“Is this farm business, then? Can I ask who's calling?”

“Look at me, ass before ears—sorry, honey, I'm Lida Berren, I'm the head of the town events committee, and I got delegated after last night's meeting to be in touch and make sure your farm is still planning to provide vegetables for the town dinner.”

Zilla smiles, relaxes, and puts her balsam down. That she can deal with, since it was part of one of Hess's neatly ordered lists. “Of course I'm still providing vegetables! Hess says I'm supposed to let you know two weeks out what's looking good, so you can finalize menus.”

“Good. That boy, running off on us when he was so helpful last year. He's on the committee, you know. His father was, when they lived here, but he mostly just moved chairs, Hessel's much more useful.”

It's impossible to be sure, but Zilla is almost certain that's a hint, and could shake Hess for not telling her that he had to duck out of a committee. She'll have to scold him the next time she sends a message telling him how she's doing, getting pictures of beautifully terraced scenery in return. “What was he doing, besides providing the vegetables?”

“Oh, this and that. He's the youngest on the committee so I'm afraid we often stick him with the set-ups for these things.” Moving chairs, then, Zilla surmises, and has to suppress a smile. “But he usually also helps with the cooking for these town dinners, not just the raw materials. He was in charge of salads for the spring dinner, you know, all his sprouts and shoots were delicious.”

“There's a dinner every season, then?”

“Yes, we like having an excuse to celebrate, and the donations allow us to keep throwing them and maintain our little community center.”

The community center is a lovely building, a converted old temple that Hess pointed out from the market green, right in the middle of town, explaining that it's used for weddings and funerals and pretty much any other function in town that needs an indoor space. “That sounds delightful,” she says, with perfect honesty. “How can I help beyond the vegetables? Hess and I don't have all the same skills, but even so I'm pretty sure I can do some salads.”

Lida, when she answers, is all smug delight, clearly having been waiting for the offer. “Oh, no, summer salads are very different, dear, but if you want to cook something, and help us set up and decorate and—you're a green witch, isn't that what Annie Hallow said? Maybe you can devise some centerpieces for us.”

It's probably a little much, trying to juggle a farm, four employees, and now a very busy town committee, which is probably why Hess begged out of it on her behalf. “I think that's probably doable, I'll look at my workload for that week to double-check, though.”

“Wonderful! I'll put you down on our list. Everyone will be so happy to get to know you, we love having new blood on town committees, and we're all missing Hessel terribly already. And you'll be glad to get to know people! Who have you met so far?”

Zilla laughs and doesn't name her clients, because no witch ever would, but mentions business owners and her employees and then, on a whim, adds “Oh, and I've met Ardith a few times, with the pegasus farm? I'm actually going to meet them the day after tomorrow, and hopefully I'll be brave enough to ride one.”

“Ardith Kinrey?” It's hard to tell whether the shock or delight is predominant in her voice, but both are enough to tell Zilla, if she hadn't already suspected, that this is an unusual invitation. “My goodness, that's good news! You tell her and her father hello, won't you?”

Lida seems well-meaning, but she also seems like a busybody, and Ardith seems like someone who doesn't want gossip about what she's doing and who she's socializing with spread all over town. Zilla is already going to have to apologize to her for mentioning this in the first place, she's not going to compound it by passing on messages that are probably unwanted. “Of course,” she says, instead of arguing, and changes the subject to centerpieces.

*

Saturday morning dawns hot, and Zilla turns on the irrigation system before she thins out a bed of carrots so she can shamelessly bribe any pegasus she meets. By virtue of how early she gets up, she still has plenty of time to make calming tea with her most calming honey and still ends up fidgeting around anxiously until it's reasonably time to get on her bike and ride over. A drive would be less than ten minutes, but this way she gets to work off her energy and she can leave earlier.

She still has to pedal slow, and takes the opportunity to enjoy the outskirts of town, the farms and forests that make it up. There's a dairy farm not far from Hess's, and long stretches of fields with newly-made hay bales curing in them, waiting to be picked up for storage. She stops to enjoy the wildflowers just starting to come back after that mowing and to listen to the hum of bees, missing her hives dreadfully for a minute, and as a result gets to Ardith's driveway right at nine thirty.

It's a gravel drive, like most of them in Allerston, if longer than most, with a little signpost saying it's Raised Wings Stable next to the mailbox, and woods on either side so she can't see much beyond. When she cranes her neck up, she thinks she sees distant shapes that could be birds and could be something else, but she can't be sure, so she turns down the drive and pedals on. The trees only last a few seconds, only a few rows of them like a fence around the property, before the land opens up into fields. For a second she wonders why the trees are the only fence—they seem, from what she can tell from a distance, to ring the property—before she catches sight of something much too big to be a bird landing on top of a large rock in the middle of the field and realizes how impossible fencing them in would be.

The house and stable are in the middle of the clear area. The stable is large, big enough to fit a fairly sizable herd, with half a second story, probably a hayloft, the other half left flat as a perch, most likely. The house is a white farmhouse that sprawls less than most farmhouses she's seen, with the drawn up tight look of a city house that has to worry about neighbors and some garden beds planted close around it, all tightly contained in the middle of the huge pasture.

Up closer, she can see the only fences on the property, cages around the garden beds, and she can see that the house has cheerful blue shutters that are peeling a little, unlike the clean and recently-repainted white of the rest of the house, but she doesn't have time to notice much more, because Ardith comes out of the stable, wiping her hands on her pants, and gives Zilla a wave when she spots her.

Zilla goes a little faster instead of gawking, now that she's been seen, and puts down her kickstand less than a minute later in front of the house. “I brought bribes,” she says right away, and winces. “For them, not you, to be clear. They still like carrots, right?”

Ardith smiles a little. “They do, and they'll appreciate that. Thank you for coming, by the way.”

“Thank you for having me, I get the impression it's an honor. If people bother you about it, sorry, I didn't realize it's rare and I told Lida Berren. I didn't tell her you want charms, just that I'm coming over to meet the herd.”

“That's fine,” Ardith says, though her smile has disappeared. “Do you want to come meet them?”

“Of course I do, but do let me know when you want to talk business.”

Ardith glances at the house. “In a bit. I've just been feeding everyone, so they're mostly still in the barn, and you can meet the most of them at once.”

The more Ardith keeps her secrets, the more Zilla wants to know them, but she keeps Hess's words and her own training in mind and lets Ardith steer the conversation. She takes the basket of carrots off her bicycle and strikes out for an easy conversational topic while they walk. “Are any of the hay fields I saw on the way over here yours?”

“No, we buy in, this is our whole operation.”

Inside the stable, it's dim and noisy, and it smells like hay and animal, but not in a bad way. It's clearly kept clean, probably mostly by Ardith herself, since there's no sign of employees for what must be at a glance almost fifty stalls. “Are they all yours, or do you stable some?”

“Some are boarders in training, some are breeding stock, so they're not all ours, but it's not the kind of operation where people will come to ride on the weekends. We train some racers, and some long-distance flyers, and some show animals.” Ardith's face softens as they approach one particular stall. “This is Anemone, she's friendly and she'd appreciate a carrot, since she's due to foal not too far in the future and it's getting hard to fly.”

Zilla knows how to take a hint, and she comes up to the stall door. Anemone has her face buried in what must be an oat bag, but at the sound of people in her space, she perks up and starts coming over, her wings creating eddies of breezes as she comes. She's a lovely dapple grey, wings spread wide for balance on the ground, and she is indeed a lot rounder than the average pegasus seems to be. Heart in her throat, Zilla takes a carrot out of her basket and offers it in her palm. After a moment of consideration, there's hot breath on her hand and then Anemone, with great delicacy, takes the carrot and eats it in one bite. “I'd give you all of them,” Zilla says when she immediately starts looking expectant, “but it's hard, you see. I want everyone to like me.”

“If you run out, I have sugar cubes,” Ardith assures her. “Annie here is as sweet as they come, and fairly small too, so stay a minute and get to know her, I need to pick a rock out of a shoe before Sage flies off for the day but then I'll come fetch you.”

Anemone, once Zilla puts the carrots on the ground and firmly away, seems resigned to her carrot-less fate, but also happy to nose at Zilla's palm and then let Zilla gently pet her nose and her neck, fingers tangling a bit in her mane. Zilla murmurs the same nonsense to her that she does to her hives and to the cats and dogs of people she does rounds for, and turns to Ardith with a smile when she returns. “She's absolutely beautiful.”

“She likes you,” Ardith observes, which makes Zilla beam at her. “Come on, we'll walk down the row and then we'll go outside so you can see them fly.”

Zilla is happy to do just that, so she trots along in Ardith's wake and meets everyone. She can tell which ones are breeding stock or otherwise belong to Raised Wings because all the ones that do are named after flowers and herbs and trees, and Ardith explains halfway down the row that the initials they choose for them are to show which matrilineal line they come through, a crude way of keeping records, though by necessity they submit their bloodlines to stud books as well.

Not every stall has a nameplate, and Zilla is relieved for Ardith's sake, because if they don't have employees, there's a lot of manure to shovel, and a lot of feeding to do. Still, even with some already out for the day, Zilla is using Ardith's sugar cubes by the end of the row, saving her last carrot for whatever pegasus Ardith decides to put her on before they leave.

“Come on outside,” Ardith says eventually. “I'll bring one down for you, but first maybe you'd just like to watch them fly.” She tilts her head back at the row behind them. “And once they all realize that they aren't getting more treats, their doors are open, so they'll follow us out quickly.”

Zilla follows, and stares up at the shapes in the sky, flying around with the joy of the morning, incredible wingspans when compared with the occasional bird flying overhead. They range far enough that it makes her nervous, wondering if they'll come back, but Ardith doesn't seem concerned, and Zilla tries to look from every angle while not moving around too much, not wanting to infringe on their space as a stranger.

One of them, a big black pegasus with one white foot, lands down at the far end of the property, near the woods line, and Zilla blinks with surprise when she sees what looks like an extra stall there. “Do you have a hermit?” she inquires, pointing at it, and then looks expectantly at Ardith.

Ardith, to Zilla's surprise, is blushing, her jaw set as she looks in that direction. “No, it's … it's for a unicorn.”

Zilla remembers a hundred books and childhood dreams and the rare footage of tame unicorns and even rarer footage of wild ones, and then a more recent memory comes up, Tal on the train with her telling her to chase unicorns as a blessing and an encouragement. It's hard to imagine it being literal. “You have a unicorn here?”

“You don't have them, they have you, and no,” says Ardith, a little disapproving, and then sighs, maybe at how cowed Zilla looks at that. “My mother always wanted one to come, and I do too. On one level, it's like getting a rabbit to keep your cat company, or a goat to keep your sheep from wandering, though they'll never be as tame as either. On another … they only come to happy places. Worthy ones. And ones that need them, sometimes. But while one blesses you with its presence, there are so many benefits.”

“Like?”

“Any farm like ours, we lose a pegasus every year or two. They decide they no longer want to be tame and they fly away, and there's nothing to do about it but take measures that almost all farms decide are cruel. It's a cost of the business, and the better you treat your herd, the fewer you lose. But a unicorn, it grounds them, gives them something to come home to, and as long as the unicorn stays, they will.”

Zilla looks down the field at the stall. Ardith's mother has been dead for years, according to Hess, but it's still well kept-up, not being eaten by the undergrowth. It has the aura of a guest room waiting for someone to come and stay. “That's what you're asking me to help with,” she guesses. “I don't know any charms for unicorns, but I could do some research, make some guesses.” She tilts her head, considering. “I'm often teased for having one solution to every problem, but I wonder if we could find the right honey to be part of it.”

“That's—not what I wanted to ask you about, actually, but maybe we can talk about it.” Ardith turns around and smiles, though her brow knits together as she does. “Oh. There's my dad, I thought he was sleeping in.”

Zilla turns around, wary and wondering what to expect, and follows when Ardith starts walking back the little way to the farmhouse. Ardith's father is tall and long-boned like she is, but without her stately grace of posture. He looks older than he must be, his shoulders a little stooped, and his steps are shaky as he walks to meet them, unsupported by anything but taking great care. He looks just enough like his daughter that Zilla can start piecing together the features she must have inherited from her mother, and when she gets close enough to see his face, he's smiling beneath the brim of his hat. “Morning, both of you. Ardith, did I know we were having company?”

Ardith trots the last few steps to kiss him on the cheek. “I left a note on the fridge, so you were only supposed to know if you'd already had breakfast.”

“I will eat when I'm hungry,” he says, mild but maybe annoyed, and turns his gaze on Zilla. His eyes are dark brown and piercing, and his face is handsome, still without many lines. It's just his posture and his uncertain steps that make him seem older than he is, and Hess told her there was an accident for both of Ardith's parents. “Hello, miss. There aren't a lot of strangers in town, so I'm guessing you might be Hess's green witch?”

“I am. My name is Zilla, and Ardith offered to let me have a ride on a pegasus, if you don't mind, Mr. Kinrey.”

“Please, Lev, no need for formality with me. Thank you for blessing our town with your magic, it's been too long since we had a witch in the area.”

“I'm happy to help while I'm here.”

He finally shakes her hand. “Well, the gossip downtown when I got my coffee yesterday says you're being helpful indeed. Anything you need from us, just ask.”

“And the same to you, especially if I'm going to be around begging for time with your herd.”

He smiles over her shoulder, eyes tracking the movements of something as it flies. “You're always welcome.” He focuses on her again. “Now, I'm going to have breakfast and some of Hess's fine tea before I start my day, and you should enjoy your ride.”

Ardith follows him a few steps when he starts back to the house, and Zilla turns back around to watch a bay pegasus fly lazy loops above the field while they have a low-voiced conversation. When Ardith comes back, they start walking together, back to the stable, but Ardith doesn't say anything, and Zilla is thinking over a few things, so for once, she lets a silence stretch.

When they get inside, Ardith easily slings some tack over her shoulder and starts off down the row. “Marjoram is a slugabed, he'll still be in and easy to saddle and he won't try taking off. If you haven't even ridden a horse before, you should stay on the ground for a few lessons at minimum.”

Marjoram turns out to be a brown gelding who's already received one carrot and is clearly delighted to have another, and who considers chewing on Zilla's hair when she gets close enough for that to be a possibility. “How do I saddle him?” she asks when Ardith opens his stall door.

Ardith raises her eyebrows. “You want to learn? Most people getting cursory lessons don't care about that.”

“I want to learn this right, even if I'm not here long enough to get really good at it. Will it take too much time?”

“No, it's a light day today,” says Ardith, and settles into the rhythm of teaching her. She's a good teacher, clear and firm and thorough. She doesn't let Zilla do the saddling, but she explains every step as she does it, all the differences from a horse's saddle to accommodate for the wings, and then leads them to a mounting block before helping Zilla into the saddle.

Zilla wants to object, to ask for lessons in mounting properly, but suddenly she's up on Marjoram's back, Ardith giving her advice on her posture and balance as they leave the stable, and she feels tall and nervous and delighted all at once, not used to the perspective, to the jar of legs moving under her, something warm and living that she has to trust to get her where she wants to go.

“I'll have you on a lunge today, and teach you some of the basics of how to get him to do what you'd like him to do,” Ardith says when they get outside, producing what seems to be a long leash with some elasticity to it. “We'll only have an hour or so, but you'll be using a lot of new muscles, so an hour will be plenty.”

Zilla wants to be up and flying, but she knows how to start slow. Before she goes anywhere, though, she catches Ardith's eye as she clips the lunge to the bridle. “He would have to ask me. If you don't want to do this in light of that, now's the time to tell me, but it's firm. The person I'm helping needs to be the one to ask.”

For a moment, she doesn't think she'll get an answer. Ardith stills, head tilted so Zilla can't see her face, and stays there for long enough that Marjoram prods her with his nose. “I understand. And I won't go back on my word,” she says eventually, and then straightens, all brisk business. “Now, I'm going to tell you how to get him to walk forward, so listen carefully.”

Zilla does, and by the end of her hour, gets the joy of riding one small circle without the lunge, Marjoram walking with regal calm under complete control. Ardith gives her a real smile and helps her dismount, making a sympathetic face when all of Zilla's muscles remind her what she just put them through the second she's on the ground. “Good thing I have charms and Hess's house has a bathtub,” she says ruefully.

“That will help,” says Ardith. “And maybe I'll see you for another lesson or two before you go.”

“I hope so,” says Zilla, and takes the cue to leave with only a few regrets.


	3. Week Two

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Zilla settles into Allerston, joins a town committee, gets more jobs witching, and has a pegasus riding lesson.

“Hi, honey, you must be Zilla,” says a newly familiar voice, and Zilla returns from sprucing up her displays after the morning market rush to find a woman standing at the entrance to her stall, hands on her hips, giving off the impression that if she isn't Zilla she'd better explain why not. Lida Berren is short for her personality, with bobbed white hair, sunglasses that make Zilla wonder if she's related to Lumi and they share taste in them, and an outfit otherwise completely in lime green. Zilla swallows her smile. “I'm Lida, we spoke on the phone. You're still coming to Wednesday's meeting, aren't you?”

“I wouldn't miss it,” Zilla promises. “I've been thinking about your centerpieces, I'll come with a few sketches, since samples aren't really possible a few weeks in advance if you want things that will be in season then.”

“Excellent.” Lida pokes disapprovingly at the half-full basket of peas. Zilla is going to run out, and regrets not having the team pick more before they left for the weekend. At least the restaurants will get a large supply. “And how was your visit with the Kinreys? I really should bring a casserole by one of these days. Maybe something with that zucchini everyone's got, it's just coming ripe.”

Hess is smart enough that he only planted two zucchini plants for his own personal use and preservation, so at least Zilla doesn't have to try to sell it when there's an inevitable glut. She's not, however going to take the bait about Ardith and Lev. “It was so amazing getting to ride a pegasus! They put me on Marjoram, who's terribly sweet.”

Lida prods benignly for the rest of the time she's browsing, but she gives up with good grace when Zilla keeps on talking about nothing but riding and watching the herd, and goes home with a basket of vegetables, a packet of Hess's nettle tea, and a big jar of Zilla's yellow-flower honey.

The stall is busy—maybe busier than the week before, which could be larger crowds that know that every week of the summer will bring more and more vegetables, or could be people wanting to see the new witch, judging by how many people browse through the teas and honeys and then blurt out that they're looking for a charm to scare away bats that live in their attic, or to help them sleep better, or to keep a light fixture from burning through lightbulbs too fast until the town electrician gets around to them on her list. She takes their information down, sells more than a few jars of honey, and generally wonders if she's going to run out of stock before noon until, sometime in the late morning, Ardith announces her presence by clearing her throat from somewhere near the lettuce.

“You're very popular,” Ardith observes when Zilla turns to her.

Zilla smiles at her and sticks her hands in her pockets mostly for something to do. “Six years of charms left undone, everyone is taking advantage.”

“You're a coven witch, aren't you?”

“I am, in the Terian coven—coven-employed, for the moment, so it's very strange to be out and stretching my wings.” She's used to Nia and the other witches having context that would help, if she called to double-check something about a charm, but they don't know these people, don't know what they need, so they can only debate theory like wizards if she calls them. “I like it, though. And I'm honored everyone is so willing to trust me.”

Ardith shrugs. “We think well of witches here. Mrs. Hillshaw was the lone witch for decades, pretty much everyone around here grew up with her and trusted her, pretty much the whole region turned out for her funeral.” She nods at the apple tree at the center of the park, surrounded with shade-blooming flowers just coming into the nicest part of their bloom. “That was planted in her honor for her seventy-fifth birthday, and in the years since, nearly every family has taken a cutting to graft onto their own trees.”

Zilla looks at the tree a little closer than before, seeing the signs of careful cutting and pruning, not taken faster than the tree can handle. “I'm sorry I couldn't meet her,” she finally says. “She must have been wonderful to deserve a tribute like that.”

“She was. So that's probably why everyone trusts with you. When you only know Mrs. Hillshaw, it's hard to imagine any witches might be anything but wonderful.”

“Do you agree?” Nobody else is coming into the stall, the crowd thin at the moment, and Zilla takes the opportunity to rearrange what she has left, tidying while Ardith watches.

After a moment, Ardith hums. Maybe she's thinking about Zilla turning down her request for help because she was asking for the wrong person, or about something else completely. She's so quiet and grave that she's hard to read. “I think that's a lot of pressure to put on a person,” she finally says. “You've known us for a week, you shouldn't be expecting yourself to be what Mrs. Hillshaw was, and nobody else should either. You're a good witch, though, that's plain.”

“So says gossip?”

“I don't listen much to gossip,” says Ardith, and doesn't seem inclined to elaborate on what makes her think Zilla is a good witch, in that case. Instead, she frowns at Zilla's crate of honey. “I actually came to buy a bigger jar of what you gave me last week.”

“For Lev, or for you?”

“We both had some of the last. Would you recommend something different?”

Zilla frowns at her honeys, the wide array of them. She picked the honey for Ardith's tired eyes and strong shoulders, with the herbs of the tea in mind, and not for Lev's unsure steps and distant gaze. Still, a little happiness can't hurt either of them. “No, the same is fine. I picked the first one for you, but I think it's probably going to be good for both of you.”

“He really liked it. He asked me to get a big jar so we could have some on pancakes as a treat instead of just putting it in tea.”

That's a very good sign, and Zilla beams and picks out her biggest jar. “That sounds delightful, and I hope you enjoy your pancakes. There's not much that can't be fixed with those, honey or no honey.”

“We used to have them once a week at least,” says Ardith, with a smile that falters when she looks at Zilla, like she's wondering how much she knows.

Even if Hess hadn't told her about Ardith's mother, she would have figured out by now that there's a before-and-after in her life, that there are a lot of “used to”s that she could mention. “Perfect time to restart the tradition, then,” she says, as briskly as she can.

“Right. How much for this?” Ardith asks, taking the jar.

Zilla knows how to take a hint, quotes her the price, and makes change when she needs to, before Ardith excuses herself by saying that Peony, her most common riding pegasus, must be getting impatient where she's tied up. She leaves with just the honey, nothing else from any of the other stalls, and Zilla goes back to busying herself with tidying, since the crowd is still thin, while she disappears.

A minute later, a shadow goes over the stall, and she looks up in time to catch the sight of sunlight in wings as Peony flies higher up, and a flash of them as she flies in a tight twisting spiral before she flies on out of town.

When Zilla looks down again, there's a customer, and she puts her attention back on the work and goes home with a lot of nearly-empty baskets at the end of the day.

*

It's easy, in her second week on Deep Roots, to fall into the rhythm. She knows what his employees are best at and what they need help to do, has figured out the best routes to get to all the restaurants and markets that expect deliveries. Monday night, she cooks dinner for all his employees, and listens to them talk about school and their dreams and the town, and makes a charm for Gil to keep his laundry fresh for longer, a mere trifle, in exchange for him doing the dishes afterwards.

Tuesday, she goes out on deliveries again, much more confident with the route and people both. She's feeling satisfied with herself by the time she's almost back to the farm, already thinking ahead to what she has yet to do, only to see another truck waving her down in the road before she can turn into the driveway. When she rolls down her window, Lev Kinrey is smiling at her from the driver's seat. “If it isn't Zilla the witch,” he says. “I've just been out buying some feed and took the long way home. How's the farm?”

“Pretty well. Hess has good employees, they're training me up right.”

“Ardith said he's got some of the town kids working for him. Are they there today?”

“Half of them, two have the afternoon off.”

“And do you have much more to do?”

Zilla frowns and thinks over her schedule for the afternoon. Other than checking on Shay and Mara and spending some time working with them, she doesn't have particular plans, just a list of things that can be done whenever she pleases and four charms to make after dinner. “Not terribly much,” she says, and eyes him. He looks a little steadier than he did the morning she met him, but he's not standing, either. “Did you want a consultation?”

“Come over for tea, if you have the time. Ardith is off on a flight to take Lady Dall to see her owners for the afternoon, so you and I can chat.”

Ardith probably won't like that much, but if Lev wants help for himself, she'll happily give it to him, and she doubts he'll ask with his daughter there. “I need to go to the farm for a bit, check in on my employees and do a little work. I could come over in an hour. Would that be enough time?”

“She might come before we're done, but I'm a grown man, and if I want to consult with a witch, I will.”

Zilla smiles at him. “Then I'll come over in an hour.”

“Any preferences for tea?”

“Herbal and hot, but your choice from there,” she tells him. “I'll see you then?”

“Looking forward to it,” says Lev, and they both drive on.

Zilla is stupidly nervous for the next hour, while she checks in on Mara and Shay, fetches them some cold water and toast with jam, helps them weed a bed, and then changes into something not covered in dirt after the weeding before she leaves.

Raised Wings is just as amazing on second sight. Later in the day, it seems that almost no members of the herd are in the barn. They're flying above, wheeling lazy circles, or sleeping in the shadows of rocks and trees, or grazing on the grass and flowers, and they watch Zilla with interest as she bikes by, craning her neck so much as she watches them in return that her front wheel is wobbling back and forth constantly.

When she looks at the house, Lev is waiting on the front step, with a smile and a wave for her, and she puts up her kickstand and dismounts as soon as she's close enough. “I can't get over being so close to them,” she confides as she takes off her helmet and approaches the door. “Maybe they're normal in the countryside, I've honestly got no clue, but I know they're not around in cities.”

“We're the third biggest farm in the country,” Lev says, with a touch of pride, and shows her inside.

Hess's house was abandoned for a while, and he's had to start from scratch. The Kinrey house, she can tell at a glance, has more continuity. Everything is clean, if occasionally shabby, but Zilla gets the impression that if she moved the hall rug, and some of the pictures, their outlines would be baked into the walls and floor by how long they've been there. There are lace-edged curtains that have to be old from how cream they've turned, and the floral wallpaper doesn't seem much like Ardith or Lev, and looks old-fashioned enough that probably a mother or grandmother chose it fifty or more years ago.

At the end of a hall, before it branches to a porch door on one side and a door to the rest of the house on the other, is a huge painting of a pegasus in an ornate frame. She's pure black, one of the larger varieties, neck arched proudly, painted on the ground with her wings poised to take off. When Zilla wanders closer, wondering if she's one of theirs or just a beautiful painting, she discovers that the table below the painting has not just a bowl full of keys and other items that come out of pockets but a few more modern pictures too. Most of the people she doesn't recognize, even if she can assume a family resemblance, but there's one picture, front and center, that she parses immediately.

Ardith is in the middle of the family portrait, maybe sixteen or seventeen, and she looks much like she does now, even down to how serious her eyes are, even though she's grinning. There's a huge blue ribbon attached to her braid, swinging in front of her shoulder. Lev looks thirty years younger, tall and laughing, a bouquet in his arms like he's holding a baby. Ardith's mother is shorter than both of them, but she has Ardith's coloring, with her hair cropped to her chin and going an early grey, and the hand not on Ardith's shoulder is holding the reins of a bridle that leads beyond the range of the camera.

“Ardith used to compete,” Lev says, drawing her attention away. “So did Sima. Sima was mostly speed races, but Ardith did the longer flights, and sometimes the tricks. That was for a trick flight, junior division, blue ribbon two years in a row.”

It's hard to imagine Ardith as a trick rider. She doesn't seem like she takes a lot of chances, but grief can do that to a person, so Zilla doesn't say it. “Sima was her name?” she says instead.

“We're getting ahead of ourselves.”

Zilla turns away from the picture, decides not to ask about the painting, and follows his gesture onto the porch, which is screened in but probably covered in glass every winter. It's a comfortable place, with wicker furniture with deep cushions, a braided rug, an enormous cat sunning himself on a footstool, and a plate of snacks and tea set out.

One of the seats has a little table next to it with the day's newspaper, crossword open and half-solved, next to it, and the cat is closest to it, so Zilla takes the other chair and pours herself a cup of tea, savoring the scent of one of Hess's nicest blends, not the one Ardith brought home for him but delicate and floral, far too easy to oversteep. “Have a seat,” she says, because it's his house, but she's the witch. The witch is always the hostess, in tradition, and Allerston, primed by Mrs. Hillshaw, believes in tradition.

Lev sits down in the chair with the crossword. “I'm not asking for a charm.”

“I didn't think you were.” She folds her hands in her lap. “Maybe I should start. Ardith offered to have me out here for a lesson in riding a pegasus in return for some unspecified witching. She was kind enough to let me have a ride even when I told her I wouldn't do work on you unless you were the one to ask.”

He snorts a little, but his shake of the head is more fond than exasperated. “She worries too much.”

“We're here to talk about you, not Ardith. Unless you want me to tell you that I won't do magic on Ardith unless she asks me to, which at this point would make me lock you both on this porch and talk, which might be the best magic of all.”

“It might.” He opens his hand flat, balls it into a fist again. “I don't even know what to ask for.”

“I'm not a doctor. I'm not a therapist. With that in mind, what do you want?”

It's not the most graceful witch's disclaimer, but Zilla has found, since she was allowed to work unsupervised with new clients, that it's an effective one. Some people get angry. Some people ask for the impossible, the deep wishes that no kind of magic can give them. Some people dither. Lev stays calm, though, and he doesn't ask for his wife back, for Zilla to turn back time. If he dithers a little, she can't blame him. It's one of her favorite responses, next to clear and immediate laying out of terms. “I have a doctor,” he finally says. “I even have a therapist. But I want to talk about moving forward.”

Half of a witch's magic is listening, and Zilla spends the next half hour listening while Lev talks about the fall from a pegasus in a rainstorm searching for his wife, about the spine injury and the terror and about Ardith dropping out of college. The story comes out of order, and incomplete, but Zilla listens anyway, and doesn't ask questions, just drinks her tea and makes sure he knows she cares about what he's saying.

He's winding to a close when the house door opens and drops shut again, and there are footsteps in the hall and Ardith saying “Da? There's a bike outside, who's here?”

“Perfect timing,” he says quietly, with a smile on his face, and levers himself to his feet. “On the porch, sweetheart. With the witch, so be polite.”

A second later, Ardith appears in the door, and Zilla is both offended and amused at how worried she looks, for someone who asked Zilla to handle this exact problem, on her terms. “Are you okay, Da?”

“I ran across her and asked for a consultation, and don't you look at me like that, because you asked her first.”

“You don't have to—”

This could become a family argument that will leave them both hurt, or a family argument that will help them with honesty, but either way, Zilla has no right to be present for it, so she cuts Ardith off before she can continue. “Our consultation is almost done for the day if you wouldn't mind giving us just one moment, Ardith. I'll be out of your hair as soon as I'm done with my client.”

Ardith straightens, hackles clearly up, and then looks at her father, and Zilla again, and relaxes all at once, though she still doesn't look terribly happy. “You can offer more lessons on my behalf if that's a price she's interested in,” she finally tells Lev, and leaves again, into the house and, from the sound of some creaks, upstairs to change.

“Were we almost done?” Lev asks when she's gone. He doesn't sit down, and Zilla doesn't either. “I feel like it's all been me talking.”

“That's usual, for a consultation on an issue like this. I listen, and I take some time to think about my remedy, and how much I can offer when I'm only here for a month, instead of giving you long-term support.” She offers her hands, and is glad when he trusts her enough to take them. “Magic can't fix grief. You don't really want it to. I can give you charms for chronic pain to supplement your medication, and try a few other things, but it's not all going to be better right away.”

“I know that. And I know a lot of the work is mine.”

“But there's no shame in asking for help.”

“And what's the price being asked for your help?”

Zilla bites her lip and considers. Ardith doesn't seem to trust her much, but she made the offer, and it's something Zilla wants, something she can take with her back to Terian, the knowledge that she's ridden a pegasus. Maybe even flown on one. “I'll take the payment your daughter offered on your behalf. Lessons. I try my hardest for you, and before I go home, I fly.”

“I offer you two lessons a week as long as you're here helping me. Is that a fair bargain?”

“It's a fair bargain,” she assures him, and releases his hands. “Now, I think Ardith and I need to talk.”

“Tell her I'll make dinner if she'll give you a lesson now.”

Zilla smiles at him. “I think you two should have that talk. I'll wait outside, I don't want to interrupt her.”

Lev quibbles a little, but Zilla brushes him off and goes to wait outside, sitting on the dusty front step and watching shapes fly above and land, all very busy on business of their own. From this distance, with her eyes unfocused, she's reminded of her bees, their comings and goings mysterious to any outsider but vitally important to them, the errands that have them scouting from above for the perfect place to land next. She's too busy to miss much about Terian, but she does miss her bees. Nessa, the trainee witch, is in her apartment now, sending Zilla dutiful daily messages about them, but it's not the same.

After a while, the door groans open behind her, and Ardith comes out, letting it fall shut behind her. “Dad tells me I should remember my manners,” she finally says.

Zilla stands up and brushes off her pants before she turns around. Ardith was wearing more formal riding clothes when she came in, with her hair pinned hard to her scalp, but now it's down in a frayed braid, and she's wearing the denim and flannel that seem to be her uniform. “How was your trip?”

“They were happy for an afternoon's ride. Want to learn how to call down a pegasus?”

“I'm assuming treats are involved.” Ardith starts walking, and Zilla falls into step next to her even if Ardith's stride is longer than hers and she has to speed up a little. “You were the one who asked me to talk to him in the first place,” she observes after a few steps.

“I know. I just hate not knowing what's happening with him.” Ardith stops in the middle of a large grassy patch of the pasture and turns to face Zilla. “This isn't about you, me being upset.”

“It's an upsetting situation. And witches tend to unsettle things.”

“Yes. I guess you do. Do you think you can help?”

“With confidentiality in mind, yes. If he keeps up with the other people helping him, and if he helps me help himself, he can get what he wants, and I can help give it.”

There are a hundred questions on Ardith's face, but she seems to trust Zilla's integrity enough not to ask them. Instead, she points up. “Who do you want?”

“Marjoram again,” Zilla says promptly. “We have a rapport.”

“Good. We have arm signals for each of the herd, and they're drilled well on them. Once one sees that they're being signaled, we tend to get everyone's attention, and then a repetition will get you who you want. And probably a few curious onlookers if you have treats, which we do.” Ardith produces, like a conjurer, sugar cubes from one of her pockets and pours a generous amount into Zilla's hand, waiting while she tucks them away so her hands are free for the signal.

Ardith shows her the signal, the pattern of moving elbows and shoulders that apparently comprises a unique signal, and sure enough, when she looks, there's interest above them, and then in the pasture, and when Ardith tells her to, she tries it again, alone, and a brown shape promptly swoops out of the sky, and there's Marjoram, sure as if she's conjured him by magic, landing with a shockingly small thump on the ground a few feet away and walking up to nose her expectantly. Zilla laughs and gives him a treat, inhaling the smell of him, mammal and bird all at once, but not as musty as the smell of the tame birds she's met in the city—the smell, then, of wings that get to fly free most of the time.

Beside her, Ardith is moving, calling someone else down, and introduces her to Flutterby, a dainty mare who they board nine months out of the year while her twelve-year-old owner is at boarding school and can't keep her cared for and exercised. “Let's tack them up for a ride,” Ardith says, and Zilla takes Marjoram's bridle and is glad when he follows her happily enough.

Saddling them takes a while. Or, more accurately, Flutterby is saddled in what seems like seconds, and then Ardith takes Zilla slowly through the process of dealing with Marjoram, watching over her shoulder instead of doing it for her this time. She's a brisk but effective teacher, Zilla decides, not much encouragement but plenty of useful advice.

Getting Zilla in the saddle takes another five minutes and a mounting block, but Ardith lets her do it herself and Marjoram only stands there and looks long-suffering and perhaps a little jealous at how quick and efficient Ardith is when she mounts Flutterby. “Come on,” Ardith says when they're on. “Let's go slow, but we'll try you without the lunge. I thought we'd ride down the pasture a little.”

Zilla obediently prods Marjoram with her heels and is relieved when he listens to her and starts walking, patient and plodding. “Can we see your unicorn stall?” she asks over her shoulder.

Ardith catches up to her and then gets ahead before she responds, leading them out of the barn and into the green grass. The sun is behind a cloud, but that makes all the green and brown around them, dotted with the rare uneaten wildflower, even more vivid. “You're already helping us. You don't need to consult on everything,” she finally says.

Zilla bites her lip, considering the hundred possible responses to that. “If that's your way of telling me to keep my nose out of your business since I'm already intimately involved with your household right now, you can tell me. But if you're worried you're bothering me, or I'll ask for three lessons a week, I promise I honestly am just curious and it's more for my sake than yours.”

“I'll show you,” says Ardith, and turns in that direction. Marjoram follows a few steps behind Flutterby, happy enough to amble even though she's prancing, clearly used to being flown more than ridden on the ground, wings poised much more at the ready than Marjoram's. “If I seem secretive about it, it's because I don't like the thought of how most people in town would react.”

Unicorns are a dream, for most people. They show up in rare footage in nature documentaries, running with herds of deer or antelope, flickering through forests. Sometimes kids see them, or say they do. Sometimes there are stories about one spending time around a town, like there would be stories about a moose or a mammoth doing it. Apparently, at least according to Ardith, there's enough data on how they help pegasus herds that they must spend time with at least some. Probably people would gossip, if they heard that down-to-earth Ardith was trying to tempt one in, but Zilla suspects it's deeper than that. More to do with Ardith's mother, and the drawbacks to towns like Allerston, where you can never forget your past, and if you're part of a tragedy there will always be pity when it comes up. “I'm not part of the history here,” she says, and hopes that what she means comes through. “And I don't tell people's secrets.”

“That's why I'm telling you,” says Ardith, and keeps riding.

Zilla decides that's probably as far as she can comfortably push, and concentrates on Marjoram's rolling gait instead. Riding looks like sitting still from outside, but holding herself steady and balanced takes concentrated effort, and she suspects her thighs will be sore tomorrow, after a longer ride than her one on the lunge. And she still hasn't even learned about trotting, which her brief research has told her is much more physically demanding. At least with flying she won't feel every time a hoof hits the ground, though she may feel every time a wing beats the air.

Marjoram seems a little confused to be walking all the way down to the bottom of the pasture for no particular reason, and Flutterby even more so, but Ardith says over her shoulder that they try to exercise their animals on the ground as much as in the air, so the muscles in their legs don't atrophy, and that they shouldn't complain too much.

At the bottom of the field, Ardith hops off Flutterby's back but keeps the reins in her hand, and Zilla tries the same, with less success, and has to catch herself on Marjoram's side. When she looks over, face flaming, Ardith has her hand out like she was going to try to catch her from ten feet away. “You okay?”Ardith asks.

“My dismount needs work,” Zilla says, wry, and turns her attention to what's in front of them. It's a tall, sturdy lean-to built between two trees, weather-proof and tilted so that the entrance isn't quite visible from the easiest approach. Marjoram and Flutterby both seem interested in it, but unwilling to step much closer, but Zilla doesn't have any compunctions. She walks around the side of it, dropping Marjoram's reins and trusting him to stay where he's put, and pokes her head inside.

It's a cozy little den, on first impression. It still smells of carpentry, so it can't be more than a few months old, and probably not even that. The hay on the floor smells sweet and musty, and there's a view of the forest through the back. When she turns around again, Ardith is behind her, and she's dropped Flutterby's reins too, so at least Zilla won't get scolded for doing that without asking. “What do you think?”

“It certainly seems like a place I'd like to be, if I liked hay and stalls. Did you build it yourself?”

“It didn't feel like it counted if I didn't. This is my third attempt, I tried twice last year and then spent the whole winter on a redesign, and the build this spring seems to have gone well.” Ardith steps in, and has to duck her head. “Does it seem too small?”

“They are smaller, though, aren't they? More deer than horse, and no wingspan to worry about?”

“Exactly. I thought if it was too big it might feel lonely.”

“And no wildlife has disturbed it? That's shocking, I would think half the forest would live in here on rainy nights.”

Ardith shrugs. “A few deer, some fox kits early this spring, but mostly no. I think they know what it's meant for.” She frowns around. “It doesn't feel like enough, though. You mentioned honey, but I don't know how to use that without just making it sticky in here.”

Zilla looks around and wonders what might show care, show how hard Ardith and Lev are working to make this a home for their herd, how much Ardith has made this into a condition for hope and happiness. “I'll think about it. Will you let me help you? I won't ask a price. I think a unicorn is too sacred for that.”

“That isn't fair to you. You have a farm to run, and charms to make, and whatever you're helping my father with. And I should be doing this on my own.”

“You want the unicorn's help. Maybe you should prove that you'll accept help?” That seems to stymie Ardith, and Zilla passes her, ducking back out of the lean-to. If the animals of the forest leave it alone, she should too, unless she has something to contribute to it. “I don't want to force myself on you. You're already stuck with me twice a week.”

“Stop by again Saturday morning? We'll take another ride.” And, when Zilla just keeps looking at her, waiting for a response, she adds “You're not wrong. Accepting help where it's offered matters. If you have a suggestion, I'll listen to it.”

“Good. And I'll see you on Saturday, then.” She looks at Marjoram, peaceably eating some grass. “I should get back, I wasn't expecting to be here this long and the kids will have already left for the day.”

“Of course. Need help up?”

Zilla does, in the end, but not as much as she might, and Marjoram continues to be patient about it, and let her steer him back up to the barn. Ardith doesn't talk much, so neither does Zilla, busy thinking about Lev and the unicorn and how it's all part of the same impulse, to find a way out of grief that's calcified into habit, to heal from one terrible night.

Back at Deep Roots, the employees have indeed already gone home, leaving a record of work done and a scrawled invitation to a weekend cookout at Lumi's father's place. Zilla does the record-keeping, sends Hess a few messages about how the farm is doing and Nia a few messages about how strange it continues to be, working as a lone witch, and that she may want a consultation at some point.

Before she goes to bed, she goes into Hess's store of herbs for tea blends and picks out some aromatic flowers and herbs and puts them all in a jar, and then makes up some messy balls of oats and dried fruit and honey made mostly of flowers with magical or healing uses, tied up with ribbon so they can hang, and leaves them to set for the night.

*

Wednesday morning, Zilla drops the honey balls and the herbal blend in Ardith and Lev's mailbox with a note saying to hang one in the door of the lean-to and scatter the other into the hay on the floor and goes to spend the whole day, for once, in the sun and the dirt, planting another crop of lettuce, weeding the tomatoes, and picking anything that looks ripe for Thursday deliveries. Shay is gone, visiting family out of town for the day, but the other three are in a cheerful mood, and Zilla makes sure to tell Lumi she'd be happy to attend the cookout and will be happy to bring something if they like. Lumi requests a beverage, and Zilla makes sure to harvest some of the last of the rhubarb to make into juice before then.

Wednesday night, she cleans herself up, fills a few pint boxes full of strawberries from Hess's precious bed of them, and goes to the meeting for the town dinner.

Lida meets her at the door of the community center where they meet, a ramshackle but well-maintained place that used to be the school, long ago, and now hosts town dinners in bad weather and any other event the town cares to put on. Tonight, Lida's ensemble is violently magenta, and Zilla wonders idly if she ever wears outfits in more than one color at a time as she says hello and offers her strawberries and lets herself be pulled in.

There are, besides Lida, five people on the committee. Six if she counts the baby strapped to the chest of the youngest woman there, which she's not sure she does. The others are all Lida's age or older, perhaps in their fifties or sixties, and Lida busily introduces her to all of them and sits her next to the young woman and her baby, claiming that “you young people should sit together so you can giggle if you like.”

Avix, as the young woman reintroduces herself once Lida has taken her attention elsewhere, isn't the giggling type, but her baby is, and Zilla loves babies and spends most of the time before the meeting shamelessly flirting with him, mostly winning mistrustful but intrigued looks from mother as much as son.

Lida, of course, is in charge of the committee, though there's a man who must be ninety if he's a day who chimes in with frequent opinions that verge on heckling. Zilla keeps quiet and listens to the pattern of the discussions. There's some longer-term business about the maintenance of the hall, since the contractor who usually repaints for them has moved south to be with his child and their family, and about clarifying cleaning regulations after a child's birthday party left behind some litter, and then they turn to talk of the dinner.

All of them explain what they're talking about to Zilla as they go along, which takes more of their attention and time than anything else. She hears about the traditions, the menu, the activities for children, the cleanup, everything else they can think of to tell her as fast as they can say it. As soon as they get into the last-minute logistics, though, they fall into the lines of a well-worn squabble about allergens, and who should be in charge of making sure that they're all labeled properly, when people from the community love donating food, sometimes without warning, and don't tend to write their ingredients down, sometimes citing family recipes and secrecy in more extreme cases. Lida is in favor of banning all unplanned dishes, and someone else thinks anything unlabeled ought to be on its own table, and everyone seems to have their own pet solution, none of them perfect both for safety and for town politics.

“Some of the wizards in Terian have invented allergen bands in these past few years,” Zilla says in a pause in the conversation. “A bracelet attuned to you, that will light up or warm up or something in the presence of something you're allergic to. They're still expensive, with the spells so new and rare, and I'm not a wizard anyway, but I might be able to make some affinity bags on strings with common allergens, and they would tug towards them. It wouldn't catch everything, but it couldn't hurt, either.”

Lida beams at her. “Now that's a good idea. I'd seen an article about the bracelets, but never thought we'd get something like that here.”

“They won't be perfect. I would still recommend people stick with labeled foods, and someone should still try what Avix suggested, sitting at the end of the table with notecards and a pen for anyone who just forgets about the labeling, but it might make things a little easier.”

“That's witching,” says the oldest man, “and that's outside the bounds of committee membership. What's the price you'd ask for that?”

Zilla has to catch a sigh before it can come out. Coming up with the prices on her own, when money would scandalize them and she's not staying long, is getting exhausting. “An affinity bag is easy witching, and I don't come from a tradition where everything needs paying for,” she finally admits. “Let the materials come out of the dinner's budget, and save me the nicest spoonful of that fruit salad you were talking about, and we'll call it even.”

Lida claps her hands once, like a teacher getting the attention of her students. Even her nails are painted magenta, and Zilla wonders idly if she paints them new every day. “That's kind, and you won't regret that fruit salad, Zilla. Get me a list of materials you need and I'll drop them by the farm for you by the weekend.”

“I'll send them to you as soon as I'm home,” Zilla promises, and stands up, since the allergy argument has gone much later than she was expecting. “For now, do you mind if I get home? It's getting dark for biking and I have to be up while the dew is still on the grass for some harvesting tomorrow.”

The oldest man, whose name has unfortunately escaped her, snorts and grumbles something disparaging about people only used to driving under street lights, mostly for the sake of grumbling in general as far as she can tell. He seems like the kind of person who likes to come across as very unimpressed with everything, which can read as superiority or grouchiness. She far prefers the grouchiness, so all she does is smile at him, wave, and duck out the door while everyone else is still saying their goodbyes, knowing how long the chatter after meetings can last.

*

The next morning, Lida isn't the one to make a delivery of ingredients. Instead, it's the old man, who reintroduces himself as Moro, remains just as grumpy, but makes a show of having accidentally bought a few treats, including a jar of pepper jelly from a local farm, that it turns out no one is allergic to, and then before she can demur, he pulls out a kit and starts attaching a better light and reflective strips to her bicycle.

“If you pretend you never see him do something nice,” Lumi advises her when she arrives five minutes before he's finished for the day's work, almost under her breath, “you'll never want for anything in this town again.”

Zilla swallows her laugh, since he's near enough to hear that, and makes sure to press a sample jar of honey on him before he goes.

The next two days fall into a rhythm she likes. She makes deliveries and works on the farm and does her witching in the evenings or in any other time she has, clearing out her first backlog of charms and starting on the affinity bags. She feeds Hess's employees lunch and laughs at Hess when he calls, late-night his time and sleepy after a long day of work, to complain that they're sending him pictures and he's both jealous and worried she's spoiling them.

Friday night, when Hess's employees have gone home, or at least told her they're going home and piled into the car to go find some kind of trouble, Zilla calls Nia. “I was wondering what you've been up to this week,” Nia says when she picks up.

“Everything, it seems. Are you on your way to the meeting?”

“Yes, your timing is impeccable for keeping me company on my walk, I just left. Any messages for anyone?”

Zilla sits down on Hess's porch, in the chair she's decided is her favorite. It's the kind of porch that makes her wonder why he doesn't have a cat or a dog or something else to keep him company, but she still finds it peaceful at the end of the day, being able to look out over the farm. “No, just general greetings. Mind catching me up on business?”

“I'll send you the minutes. For now, I'd rather hear how you are. Still getting used to being a lone witch?”

“Yes.” Zilla frowns and shifts to tuck one of her legs under herself. “The witching itself isn't too hard, though there's one case I want to talk to you about. What I have the most trouble with is price. They're too traditional for money, and most of the traditional prices won't do me much good since I'm not staying long. Though I will be bringing a few nice things home.”

Nia hums down the line. “It's an interesting question. I might put it to a few of our older members, to see how you can find prices that are useful for you without offending tradition. Tell me about your case, though. It's not a very long walk to the meeting, you know, we may as well be efficient.”

“Thank you, I'd be happy to have input from the elders. They were all very fond of their last witch, apparently, and she was traditional. But let me give you the case.” She leaves out Ardith and her unicorn, and the price she's getting for helping Lev, all the many identifying details when it isn't coven business, and when Zilla is still struggling to figure out her place in it and what she wants. “I know I can give him charms to work with his current medications, and talk to him to supplement his current therapy, but I feel like there are things that witching could offer that I'm not thinking of.”

“Witchery can't fix grief,” Nia warns. “That's not what it's for.”

“I know that, and I told him that too. I still think there's some way I can help.”

“I'll think about it. And you should to, and be as honest with your failures as your successes. With yourself and him.”

Zilla nods, even if she hates the thought of disappointing Lev, of leaving Allerston and leaving the Kinreys mistrustful of her for wanting to help them, failing to do that, and leaving. Leaving them mistrustful, in turn, of anyone who might want to help them. Hess might find that more unforgivable than trying to date Ardith. She might not be able to forgive herself. “I will,” she says anyway. If a witch isn't honest when she needs to be, she's barely a witch. “Honestly, I think what he needs more than anything else is a friend, and a few good things in his life. If the only way he'll accept that is through witching, it's at least a start.”

“There are those cases. You're coven employed, you know how many people on our rounds just need a friendly ear and a little bit of help.” Nia's voice softens. “I know you, and how much you work to make people happy. It may be a nebulous case, but you do seem like the right witch for the job.”

Nia doesn't hand out compliments easily, and Zilla breathes into this one, lets the surety in the words buoy her up. “I'll keep trying. But if you think of anything, or anyone else does, let me know.” She calculates Nia's usual route to the coven hall, and where she likely was at the beginning of the conversation, and changes the subject. “I know you'll be getting there in just a few minutes, but in the meantime, tell me how Nessa is settling in, all I've heard from her is updates on the bees.”

Nia laughs. “She's fitting in well, so far, and is looking forward to getting lunch with you when you're back, but I think she's just about ready to sign on with us tomorrow.”

“I'll look forward to meeting her,” says Zilla, and asks a few more questions before she lets Nia hang up, and sits on Hess's porch and looks out at the fields in silence until the sun goes down and she remembers she has some affinity bags to build.

*

“I have good news for you,” Ardith says on Saturday morning when Zilla arrives at the farm.

Zilla smiles and dismounts her bike, pausing on the clasp to her helmet. “Am I riding first, or talking to your father first? If I'm riding I may as well leave on the helmet that fits me properly.”

Ardith smiles, and she does seem like someone who has good news to share, hands clasped in front of her, not quite bouncing on her feet but definitely impatient to show something. “Da's always a little slow to start in the morning. He says he's going to make some sumac raspberry juice this morning, and some sandwiches, and you and he can have an early lunch while I go to the city for some supplies.”

“Wonderful,” says Zilla, and leaves her helmet on as they walk to the barn. “Am I riding Marjoram again?”

“Once you get to know one of them well, it's good to just continue on with that for a while, though maybe you'll get to ride one of the faster ones before you go. You'll get to meet Peony today, though. She's one of my favorites—fast as a falcon, and smart, too. Too much for a beginner, but as often as not, when I'm riding for pleasure, I take her out.”

“I'll look forward to it,” says Zilla. “Is Marjoram out? Should I signal, or go in to fetch him?”

Ardith points up at the sun, no cloud in the sky. “It's going to be hot later, and flying takes energy. I turfed them all out of bed with the dawn today, so they can get exercise and sleep the midday away. He'll be aloft, no matter how lazy he is.”

She's looking expectantly at Zilla, so she makes the gesture she's been practicing in odd moments, and watches the attention of some of the shapes above focus on her and makes it again before glancing back at Ardith and finding her smiling, already turned to make her own gestures, which garner an immediate response, like Peony was just eagerly waiting to be called. She lands a few beats before Marjoram does, and she's a tall pegasus, her coat mostly so light a brownish-red that it's nearly pink. “What's your news?” she asks as she obediently feeds Marjoram some sugar cubes when he noses her and watches Ardith greet Peony by leaning their foreheads together.

“Things were disturbed in the unicorn stall, after I put in your gifts. Which you shouldn't have provided, but still, thank you. They … maybe it was just deer, and the superstitions about nothing using what might be a unicorn's home are wrong, but either way, it feels like progress. There's only one of the treats left.” She pauses, running her fingers through Peony's mane, before she continues. “I put a salt lick out there too. Most things like those, especially in the summer.”

Zilla beams at her. “That's wonderful!” Marjoram noses her again and she laughs and pets him. “Yes, it is, isn't it? Are you going to make a new friend?”

“I really hope so. Do you want to ride down again and see it? Maybe on the way back if you're keeping your balance well I'll show you how to trot.”

“That sounds wonderful,” says Zilla, and leads the way to the barn. Tacking up is a little faster today, and mounting too, though she still tries Marjoram's patience with both. Peony is clearly ready to be gone and moving, prancing back and forth while Ardith keeps her soothed, waiting to mount until she's sure Zilla doesn't need her help.

Peony is also clearly disappointed at first when Ardith doesn't give her the cue to take off, but Marjoram seems content as ever, and Peony acquiesces after only a few minutes, and even perks her ears up when she notes where they're going. Marjoram does too, and Zilla looks around at the other members of the herd on the ground and in the air, wondering if their patterns are different, if they're welcoming in someone new who can't fly with them, but she doesn't know them well enough to interpret it, and Ardith doesn't mention any differences.

The second time, the ride down to the stall is much easier. Zilla knows how to move with Marjoram's stride now, and how to grip with her thighs so she'll stay on without giving herself cramps, at least for a fairly short ride. She won't be ready to go out for hours at a time for a while, which means she might never be, since continuing her lessons in Terian will be next to impossible.

When they dismount at the stall, Marjoram and Peony seem content to wait without much convincing. Today, Zilla doesn't go past the doorway, but she does see the ribbons hanging from the window in the back, and the one treat still attached to one of them, and she can smell the way the herbs add to the scent of the hay. “A name plate,” she says at last. “Not with a name on that, I wouldn't dare to name a unicorn without its consent, but a sign that it would be welcome if it wanted to be named.”

Ardith frowns at the wall of the stall. “Do you think they'd want a name at all?”

Zilla frowns right back as she considers, but in the end she shrugs. “I think most things that are willing to be cared for like to have names. My hives all have names or nicknames, though I don't name specific bees, for obvious reasons. But you can always ask them, when they show up. You can understand Peony well enough.”

“I suppose you're right.” Now that they've looked, Ardith goes over to Peony, reaching out for her and giving her nose a stroke but making no move to mount up. She never does until she's sure Zilla doesn't need her help. “I just don't know what kind of name I could possibly come up with.”

Zilla goes over to Marjoram and puts her foot in the stirrup to lift herself up, grateful that the movement is starting to feel natural and there isn't too much embarrassing hopping involved. “Surely the same sort you have for the rest of your herd,” she says, a little breathless, once she's upright and fully settled in the saddle. “Obviously a new letter, and you'd have to get to know them for a while, but they could be a Thyme or a Tansy or a Comfrey or even, if you wished, a Zinnia.”

Ardith laughs and mounts, as always much more easily than Zilla. “Part of your matriline, then?”

“I wouldn't dare to claim it. And besides, if you do end up with a whole family of unicorns, there aren't that many plants starting with the letter, so you'd find yourselves in trouble pretty quickly.”

“I'll ask Da, he always likes taking down the plant identification books when we have a new foal.” Peony is already prancing, ready to move, and Ardith gives Zilla an assessing look. “Are you ready to try a trot?”

Zilla bites her lip, but she's here to learn, and a trot is a step on the way to flying. “As long as you promise not to laugh at me too much if I fall off.”

“I won't. Start with a walk, and we'll get to a trot once you have the rhythm.”

Zilla does, and soon enough she's trotting up the field, feeling like her skull is rattling in her head with each step, moving about as gracefully as a sack of apples, but she doesn't fall off, and when she gets back to the barn, Ardith tells her she did well and helps her hang the tack back up and clean and curry Marjoram before they let him go. “You aren't going to do Peony?” she asks when she notices her still saddled up.

In answer, Ardith grabs a set of panniers from the wall. “She's my ride to town. It's too beautiful a day to drive out, and she would be offended if I tried, no matter how hot it is. We'll catch some good air currents flying home.” She hesitates, and Zilla gives her the privacy of looking away, watching Marjoram amble out into the pasture, taking off right away, using the last part of the morning cool enough to fly. “Take care of my dad, won't you? I'm not asking for you to break any confidences. I just … he won't take help from me at this point, so I'm glad he'll take it from someone.”

“I'll keep an eye on him,” Zilla promises, knowing she only has two more weeks to do it, and takes off her bike helmet before she heads inside, listening to the sound of Ardith getting Peony ready for a flight as she goes.

*

Lev seems full of energy when Zilla comes in, with a plate of sandwiches set out, and two tall glasses of some kind of pink juice, already condensed with moisture. Today, he's set them up inside, in the dining room, with a table too big for two or even three, and matching chairs with very unmatching cushions, some handmade and some store-bought, some old and some new, a combination that makes Zilla smile. “Did Ardith tell you she thinks you might have tempted a unicorn to at least look at us?”

“She did. I really hope it is one.” Zilla sits down in the chair he indicates. Neither of them is at the head of the table, just across from each other at one end. “You and she both set a lot of store by it.”

“Sima always did. But I challenge you to find anyone alive who wouldn't think it was special, being chosen by a unicorn, to be trusted with that.”

Zilla stirs her juice with a spoon as he does, probably to integrate whatever sugar he spooned in a little more carefully, and takes a sip. She can taste the raspberry, and something else unfamiliar, which must be the sumac Ardith mentioned. She's used to them as nuisances, not as a flavoring for juice. “You're not wrong.” She puts the glass down. “But it's not going to fix things. Everything won't be magically better. A unicorn can't heal grief any more than a witch can.”

A witch's job is honesty, but after she's shared it, she still has to brace herself. Some people don't like honesty, and as often as not it's the witch's fault for telling the worst version of the truth, which is a sin nearly as bad as lying, but even when she's been as clear and kind as she can, it's still intimidating, waiting for a response. “I know,” Lev says after a few anxious heartbeats. “I don't know if Ardith always does, but I do know. You're not here because I think grief is something that needs to be fixed, anyway. You're here because I need to do a better job at living with it, for my sake and my daughter's. Not to mention our animals, who I leave in her hands more than I should.”

“Do you make enough to hire help?”

“If anyone would meet Ardith's exacting standards, we could take on a part-time hand or two, and we do sometimes, but often they get other opportunities elsewhere. But I hope Ardith decides to compete again someday, and if she does, we'll need help while she's away. Even when I do spend more time with the herd, my leg won't let me do everything.”

Zilla nods. “That's practical. I can help you with that, if you want. Though I can't help Ardith decide to compete.” She hesitates and presses her hand to the table. “Is Ardith an only child?”

“Yes. We thought about having more, but it would have been too easy for them to get lost in the shuffle, lose out to each other and to any emergencies out in the barn. With one, we could focus on her as much as she deserved.”

“This is a big table for two, with no extended family coming for the holidays, and no friends coming over for dinner parties.” Lev frowns, staring at the table like he's only just seeing it, but he doesn't seem to have an answer. “Part of living with grief is changing things, not letting everything become a memorial. If it's an heirloom, or you want to host parties, that's one thing. But otherwise, let yourself have a table for two. Or even four or five, for smaller parties.”

He traces a pattern on the table. “No, we bought it. Sima always wanted to host parties but then we rarely found the time. Sometimes when Ardith was in school she'd have friends over to study or play games, but you're right that we're not the kind of people for big parties.”

“You don't need to change the table in specific,” she hastens to say. “Maybe Ardith will get married, or as unlikely as it may feel to you now, you will, and the spouse will be a party sort of person. But the point I'm making is that the first thing I'm prescribing to you, as a witch, is change. Let yourself put some things in storage, or take them out of storage. Redecorate a room, or put up a recent family photo that's just your family as it is now, not to replace the others but to add to them. Or talk to some of the people in town. It's obvious they'd welcome you with open arms. All you'd have to do is suffer through some belated pity first.”

He nods, thinking through her words, still tracing out a pattern on the table, and she waits. She thinks Nia would approve of this step, but that doesn't matter if the person she's trying to help won't take the advice, or if his grief is the kind that won't be touched by that. “It's not a bad idea,” he allows at last. “I don't know if I'm ready to give up the table, but maybe once we've had our lunch we can take a tour around the house and you can look at it with fresh eyes and help me find a change to make.”

“I'd be honored,” Zilla assures him, and takes another sip of the juice. This time, she's expecting the main tastes she gets, and behind them she gets a hint of the sweetener.

It's not sugar she was stirring in after all, but her own honey, the kind meant for relief and for happiness on hard days, for contentment against all expectation, the kind she chose for them used for her own benefit in return.


	4. Week Three

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A town gossip scares Ardith off, and a call from the head of Zilla's coven leaves her feeling adrift and with a lot of questions about the future on her mind.

Zilla's stall is full almost to bursting at the farmer's market the next morning, and she's barely set up by the time they open. The beautiful week of weather has brought everything ripe all at once, it seems, so she's got baskets full of various kinds of tomatoes, of cucumbers and string beans and late peas and the very earliest corn and a few precious quarts of new potatoes, all she dares harvest when most of them will have to come out at full size and they just needed some thinning.

“Hess is going to be so pleased with how you're doing,” her neighbor with the flower stall comments when the first few customers have come in to browse their way down the line. “You're always bringing such lovely things to the market.”

“He should be just as pleased with his employees, they've all kept me honest and efficient, since they know his operation so well.”

Her neighbor, a woman who only ever seems to be called Vi, beams at her. “He'll be just as pleased to hear that, and so are all of us. And you're fitting in so well. Lida Berren was talking to me about supplying flowers for the centerpieces, and was full of stories about some allergy deterrents you're making. And of course gossip says you're chatting with Lev Kinrey too, and people have been worried about the Kinreys, out there on the edge of town just the two of them.”

That's a step too close to nosiness for Zilla's liking, but she just shrugs. “I help who I can, and I'm only glad I can be useful.”

“And it doesn't hurt that you and Ardith are both such pretty young women,” says Vi, wiggling her eyebrows, and Zilla is mercifully saved from having to answer by a customer.

The stall does brisk business during the early morning rush, and even after that, Zilla is pleased to note. They're always popular, but their variety and quality of vegetables this week is impressing, and she sells a large portion of her stock of honey too, enough that she wonders if between the market, the restaurants, and the town dinner, she'll run out before she goes back to Terian. She's certainly going to have to make up some batches of Hess's most popular tea blends before next week—they only sell at the farmer's market, but they're selling very well indeed, especially with her honey.

She doesn't notice Ardith's arrival at the market until she hears Vi talking to her. “Sure you don't want to get some flowers to take over to the next stall? You won't have to carry them far at all, and I know they'd be appreciated.”

“That's just fine,” says Ardith, and Zilla doesn't turn in her direction, because that would only embarrass Ardith more, but she tilts her head until she can catch Ardith in the corner of her eye, standing stiff with her hands in her pockets. “I'm sure she doesn't need them.”

“Everybody's talking about the two of you, you know,” says Vi, and Zilla could scream at her. That's the last thing Ardith wants to hear. She can suddenly sympathize completely with Hess's horror at Zilla wanting to flirt with Ardith when she first saw her, because she's beginning to guess how hard-won it is that Ardith is at the farmer's market at all. She'd wager any money she has that she's only started coming in the past year, and mostly only then because Hess badgered her into it. “We all think it's very sweet.”

“I don't know what you're talking about.”

“Of course you don't.” Vi sounds so indulgent, and so superior, and Zilla is frozen in place and still horrified, but there's a woman and her eight-year-old son buying tomatoes to dry for some family recipe, so she has to unfreeze herself, and put on a smile, and hear all about the savory scones they're making.

She does manage to lose track of Vi and Ardith's conversation during that transaction, mercifully, and by the time she's tucking the payment away in the stall's box, Ardith is looking through the various baskets, her cheeks pink and her shoulders tense. “Hello,” says Zilla, and it feels painfully awkward immediately when she wants to seem completely natural. “Any signs since yesterday?” she adds, so she can say something, at least.

“No, I was too busy to check, but leaving some privacy down there isn't a bad thing.” Ardith's voice is hushed, like maybe Vi might be listening in, though the mother and her son have moved there to pick a few perfect gladiolas to take home and Vi, for all she's a gossip, is a very good saleswoman. “I did want to buy some more honey, though, to try making some of those treat balls myself. We have some dried apples from last year that would be a good treat in them.”

“Sounds delicious.” Zilla goes looking through her honey, wondering if she should stick with the same or with a variety, and then stands back before she can get too far. “What do you want, then? I went with my best guess on the ones I made, but this is your project. What do you think will help?”

Ardith looks at the display, all the different labels, and finally turns to Zilla with a helpless shrug, though she's still not meeting her eyes. “What about what you chose for me and my father?”

Zilla smiles. “It's a good choice. We'll try it. You could also always try different herbs or flowers in each treat. Whichever it seems to like best—there's a name for you.”

That wins her a smile, at least, though a brief one. “It's not a bad idea. I'll ask Da.” She picks up the jar Zilla indicates, and holds up her market bag of vegetables. “I shouldn't linger. I'll be in touch about riding lessons when I know what the week is looking like.”

“At your convenience,” Zilla assures her, and lets her pay without asking too many more questions. Much as she'd like to talk to Ardith more, she knows they're both feeling watched, and that whatever Ardith feels about Zilla, however much she's coming to trust her, and want to be part of the community again, Vi ruined it a little, however much she didn't mean to.

It's hard not to snap at Vi for the rest of the day, and she goes home with a headache, and weeds out one of the tea beds so viciously that she has to apologize to the remaining plants and give them an extra sprinkle of water and fertilizer to make up for it.

*

Monday dawns rainy, and the forecast and Zilla's weather sense both tell her that it will last all day, and much of Tuesday as well. She sends messages to Hess's employees telling them to stay home and sets herself to working on indoor chores, drying out plants for teas, making inventory on her honey, and finishing affinity bags and charms from her latest commissions. She also spends half an hour on the phone with Lida Berren talking her down from some spat she's having with Moro about whether they ought to have entertainment, which is traditional apparently only at the autumn and winter dinners, when people are stuck inside more often and have the time to prepare acts. Zilla comes down firmly on the side of Moro's tradition, if only for practical reasons of not wanting to find entertainment in less than two weeks, and Lida eventually acquiesces, with exasperated grace.

Tuesday rains too, but when Zilla comes home from making her rounds of markets and restaurants, the car full of Hess's employees is there, and all four of them are huddling in the greenhouse, mostly out of use in the hottest season where crops would be likely to scorch.

“We had an idea,” says Lumi, speaking as she so often does for the group. “We want to cook something for the town dinner.”

Zilla smiles at them all. “That's wonderful. Melna is in charge of the list of who's cooking and what they're doing, I can put you in touch if you'd like. What's inspired you?”

Lumi shrugs. “Summer boredom. Anyway, we know Melna's number. But we thought maybe we'd offer you an extra hour of work this week for first pick at some ingredients.”

“All four of you working is going to be worth a lot more than some ingredients.”

Mara coughs and speaks up when they all look at her. “I think we were also kind of wondering if we could use Hess's kitchen for it? Only all of us have parents cooking too, and competing for kitchen space is basically akin to taking our lives in our hands. But Gil saw this cool recipe when he was looking for other stuff, and we realized that Hess has pretty much everything growing, so we want to give it a try. It should be super spice.”

Zilla looks around at the four of them. “You schedule it with me, because I also have to cook for this. You do it when I'm home, so Hess doesn't kill me. And you all four swear to me on something that matters that the only herbs going into this dish are cooking ones, because I know teenagers.”

Gil snorts, but he's the first to raise his hand in the mockery of an oath. “If it helps, I was looking up videos of people making vegetables and fruit explode with pressure and I don't actually want Mrs. Berren to murder me so that's not going to be involved. But whatever, I swear on next year's calculus grade that I'm not going to put drugs in this dish.”

Zilla looks expectantly around at the rest of them, and gets willing oaths on a car fund, a cat, and Lumi's sunglasses that the dish will be intoxicant-free. When they've made their oaths, she claps. “So mote, then. I will turn you over to Lida without shame or guilt if you break those oaths.” There are a few alarmed looks, so hopefully they'll take that seriously. “Now, do you want a few paid hours helping me with some pickling? I'm happy to do it alone, but company makes things go much faster and you did miss out yesterday and this morning.”

Sure enough, they're all happy to get into Hess's certified kitchen and put on aprons to learn a few pickle mixes for a few different vegetables, and they spend a hot and happy afternoon there and get far more canned than Zilla was planning on when she thought it would just be her.

*

One of her charms was bargained for with a hammock, which Zilla has no use for in Terian but is happy to use now that it's ready, and will be just as happy to leave with Hess when he's home. She strings it between two trees that might as well have been planted for the purpose behind the house after work and her committee meeting on Wednesday, climbs in with a bottle of cider, and lays there, utterly exhausted from a full day in the fields making up for two rainy ones and market day, and then far too much arguing over details that have clearly been finalized for months and are only being argued over for the sake of pretending the dinner isn't so well-oiled a machine as to be boring.

When her phone rings, she almost lets it go, but when she glances at the display, it's Nia, and she can't ignore calls from the president of her coven. “Hello! Good to hear from you,” she says when she picks up.

“I have a dinner meeting with Nessa before the coven meeting this Friday, so I thought I'd call you now. Is it a good time?”

“I'm done working for the day and taking advantage of a hammock,” she says, shifting herself until she can put down the drink without tipping out of the hammock. “No time better. And we should talk earlier in the week next week, too, since I've got that town dinner next Friday.”

“I'll make a note of it. You're looking forward to that?”

“I definitely am, even if people are as fussy about it as they are about the big coven pot lucks, and make a production over something they know how to do. But Hess's employees are making some kind of eggplant dish, and it is their first time, so I guess a few people have a right to be worried.”

“Are they?”

“Not at all, of course,” says Zilla, and goes into the stories of pickling with them, and Lida and Moro's rivalry for control of the events committee, and the charms she's still making, and her lack of honey supply.

“And are you still taking your flying lessons?” Nia asks when she winds down.

“I haven't yet this week,” and she doesn't quite dare to ask Ardith if she can come over when Ardith might still be worried about the assumptions people are making about them, “but they're still happening, yes. Though I still haven't been up in the air. I'm hoping for at least once before I go, though. Speaking of, your meeting with Nessa—how's she working out?”

“Really well. I think she would sign a contract tomorrow if we asked her, though we're not asking her yet. She's young and needs to think about it all, and should make some calls to the two other covens she's shadowed in the past few months.” There's a pause, a silence that feels easy on Zilla's end, the kind of silence that only comes between people who know each other and aren't in a hurry to have a conversation. When Nia breaks it, though, she sounds like she's dragging out the words, like the silence was a bad one for her. “Are you still planning to come back?”

Zilla can't exactly sit upright in a hammock, but she does tense. “Have I given you the impression that I wouldn't? I'm committed to this coven.”

“I know you are. But if you want something else, you can have it.”

After a breathless moment, Zilla clears her throat. “What makes you think I want something else?”

“It's clear you're enjoying being a lone witch,” says Nia, a gentle chide. “That you're a good fit for these people and their community, that you're making friends and doing good work. That your talents are a match for what they want of you, and that if you stayed working for your friend Hess, for instance, you'd be supported and content. Your bees would have a greater variety of flowers there, and you'd get all the parts of being a witch that you love without worrying about taking on more than your coven-mates need you to, with all the work you could want. And we're fond of you here, Zilla, but we don't need you, either. If you want to stay, you should, especially when your talents suit that kind of work.”

Zilla knows, she does, that Nia doesn't mean that the way it feels to hear. She means to be giving Zilla her freedom with a guilt-free choice. If it hurts Zilla to be told that she's not needed, if she's hearing an unspoken “as opposed to ours” at the end of that last sentence, it's because those are insecurities she's been carrying. Fondness, _wanting_ , they're better than needing, and she remembers that right up until the moment where she feels like she's not needed. She keeps her voice as light as she can when she responds. “I can't set up a new life on two weeks, or even a month, of thinking about it. Especially when the job I'm actually doing is very temporary, since Hess will be back in a week and a half now.”

“Sounds like he's busy, and expanding operations rapidly. You could always ask if he wants a full-time worker, especially once his students are back at school.” Nia seems to understand that she pushed a little too far, though, because she sounds much brisker when she continues. “But you're right, even if you do end up deciding to move on, to Allerston or anywhere, you've hardly had any time to think about it, and the coven would never forgive me if I encouraged you to leave us. I just want you to know that you have options.”

“I know that I do,” Zilla assures her, even if she doesn't know if she believes it. “But regardless of the long-term, which I know we need to have a long conversation about when I'm back there, in between the long conversations you want me to have with Nessa about _her_ future, in the short-term I'm having a lovely time here and I'm coming back to Terian.”

“You'll always have a home here,” Nia assures her, maybe realizing how hard Zilla is having to pretend to be cheerful, and the conversation doesn't last too much longer.

Zilla lays in the hammock and finishes her drink and watches the stars come slowly out above the trees, and makes a note to make a charm bag to ward mosquitoes away from the hammock in the future.

*

The next morning, she's still feeling blue and adrift, and when her phone chimes with a message from Hess while she's making breakfast, she smiles, hoping for a picture of the greenhouses or the terraces, or for one of his little textual caricatures of his fellow students, the fondness showing through the gentle mockery the way it always did when he did it in her ear at college parties.

 _I'm enjoying the course so much, but I'm exhausted and missing the farm!_ it says instead. _Only a week and a half left. You must be looking forward to getting back to the city!_

Zilla sighs. She's unequal to responding with words, when she wants to ask him to ask her to stay, so she really does have more of a choice, and when it's so clear he doesn't need her either, that he's ready to come back and work and doesn't need more help around than his kids. Instead, she takes a picture of the morning dew cooking off the fields as mist and sends it to him, and he just sends back a few hearts, so he really must be homesick. She'll have to call him at some point and give him a verbal update on Deep Roots, not just a textual one.

Right now, though, he'll only get melancholy, and that won't help either of them, so Zilla stows her phone, eats her breakfast in the kitchen, and goes out to the fields. It's a day off for her workers, so she works herself, steadily but not too hard, so she doesn't do something stupid like pass out alone in the middle of a field with nobody to check on her. The work, and the process, of being in a garden always helps. She's a green witch, and she likes having her hands in the earth, weeding and planting one last round of lettuce and harvesting. In the afternoon, she does an abbreviated round of deliveries so the restaurants and markets who want it can have the very freshest produce available.

She spends most of the evening in the hammock again, this time with a book, though she still spends most of the time dozing, and the next morning, decides she's finished with moping.

By the time Hess's employees show up just after breakfast, she's already made them egg sandwiches with some of the herbs she's been drying from the garden and some bacon someone traded her for a charm to keep their freezer cold in case of an electrical outage. “Hess is missing you all,” she says as they eat. “I'll probably give him a call later if anybody has a message.”

They all exchange looks, baffled in the way of teenagers who don't know how to pass on messages very well, not used to that kind of social nicety. “Cool,” Shay finally says, a little bit dubious. “Hi, I guess?”

The rest of them, relieved, add in greetings of their own, and Zilla smiles and promises to pass them on faithfully and then, when they're all finished eating, shoos them out to the orchard, where Hess's three peach trees have all apparently come ripe at once. She helps them pick, keeping the fruit from being too badly bruised, and continues to keep herself busy.

It doesn't surprise her, exactly, when Lumi wanders over to her at their lunch break, when Mara and Shay have joined Gil in the shade of one of the older apple trees, much better shelter from the sun, and Zilla is sitting in the crook of one of the peach trees, enjoying climbing trees when she always got scolded for it in city parks as a child.

“You good?” Lumi asks, without bothering to lower or raise her sunglasses, which is comforting, actually. Zilla suspects that if Lumi were very worried, she would in fact remove them.

“You shouldn't need to ask your bosses if they're okay, pretty much ever,” Zilla tells her. “Especially when you're so much younger.”

“Yeah, but you're also the witch, and I feel like it's in everybody's best interests if the witch isn't, you know.” Lumi makes an expressive hand gesture that makes Zilla feel like she's about four years old and hiding a tantrum poorly. She's quite likely going to run the world someday. “Whatever.”

Zilla could argue workplace etiquette some more, make sure Lumi knows she isn't required to manage Zilla's emotions, or those of anyone who's in charge of her, but Lumi is trying to be nice, and she's probably an emissary from the other three, if none of them are yelling over asking what they're talking about. It's sweet that they care about her, even if it's embarrassing that even when she's hiding it she's obviously having a bad day, so she keeps that in mind when she answers. “I'm just having a stressful week, nothing to do with any of you or the farm, which are all running perfectly. Maybe I'm a little homesick.” That's part of it, anyway.

Lumi nods. “Spice. I don't need to hear all of it. Just, you know. If you need to do anything, we're used to doing what we need to do. We making preserves with any of this? I can get everyone hauling baskets if you need to go anywhere for a bit.”

Zilla eyes the trees, and the baskets. They have a good four bushels, and the trees will probably give them another two or three within the next week. Hess doesn't do a lot of any one thing, but a bit of a lot of things. “One bushel for preserves,” she decides. “But we won't be making those this afternoon, it's too hot to be in a canning kitchen. I think we're supposed to get some rain tomorrow, so I'll do it then. However, I am going to take advantage of this warmest part of the day to not be in the fields and go pick up some jar lids, because incredibly, despite Hess's cabinet full of canning supplies, he does not have wide mouth jar lids.” She glances over at the other three, and back at Lumi. “If you guys could please get all the baskets to the delivery shed and one to the canning kitchen, I'd say this is a great afternoon to weed the tea herbs in the shadiest part of the garden. But finish your break first.”

Lumi gives her a lazy salute. “That's the plan, boss. Take your time.”

At least, even if she is feeling lonely and terrified of having to make decisions about her future, Hess's employees like her, and she takes that thought with her as she waves at all of them, picks one last peach to eat on her way, and hops out of the tree to drive her bike to the store.

*

Zilla is frowning at the selection of canning supplies, wondering if she could use some extra cheesecloth, when someone clears her throat behind her.

“Hi,” says Ardith when Zilla turns around, a little sheepish, with her hands white-knuckled on the handle of her basket and something like a smile on her face. “Sorry I haven't been in touch about lessons this week. I made a promise, and so did Da, and—”

“I get it,” Zilla says before Ardith can start blaming herself, or worse, explaining. Ardith opens her mouth again, and Zilla shakes her head. “I really do.”

Ardith's mouth does something, almost a twist, almost a smile, that tells a whole story. “I suppose you do. Getting things seems to be what you do.”

Zilla shrugs. “I'm a witch. How have you been this week?”

“Okay. Took Peony on a long flight yesterday, to High Lake and back.”

That makes Zilla raise her eyebrows. “That's got to be a hundred miles round trip, you weren't kidding about long flights.”

“Peony is a distance flyer.” Ardith frowns at her, apparently barely paying attention to the conversation, and finally says “Are you okay?”

Oh, embarrassing. Zilla's unhappiness is so obvious that a teenager and a woman so uncomfortable with people that she'll run away rather than be gossiped about feel the need to check in on her. She appreciates their care just as much as she feels naked for being noticed. With Ardith, at least, she doesn't have to worry about not making an employee help her with her emotions, so she shrugs again. “Not really.”

They're in the middle of a store, and the only way the general store has survived according to Lida is by being completely and ruthlessly neutral about gossip, refusing to hear it or pass it on as an institution. Ardith probably could ask, and Zilla could tell her everything, and unless someone came in in the middle of all of it, probably it would remain a secret. And Ardith looks like she wants to ask, and Zilla really wants someone who isn't Hess or Nia to tell her what she should do, but she's in a bargain with Ardith right now, so she shouldn't. When Ardith speaks, though, she doesn't ask what's wrong. She tilts her head, loosens her grip on her basket, and says “I think you're ready to fly, if you want to try.”

Zilla takes a sharp breath, thinks of the wind in her face, Marjoram solid and strong, the incredible sound of wings beating on either side of her. “I'm free now,” she says, even if she isn't really.

Ardith actually smiles at her, though, so it's the right answer. “You on your bike? I flew over. I'd beat you there, but we can't exactly share rides.”

“You beating me there is fine,” Zilla assures her. “Actually, you go first at the register and get even more ahead of me, I have to send a message to the kids anyway, so they know where I am if they need me.”

“Am I pulling you away from work?”

Zilla makes a dismissive gesture. “It's a farm—as you well know, I could work every hour of every day and still not do everything. A few hours aren't going to make much of a difference, and I think it would help.”

“Then we'll definitely do it. Even if we didn't have a bargain, Hess asked me to keep an eye on you.”

Ardith starts walking, apparently done with shopping, and Zilla snags some cheesecloth off the shelf before following her. “He what?” she asks, because the last she knew Hess didn't want them anywhere near each other lest they break each other's hearts. “Before he left?”

“This week, we've been sending some messages,” Ardith says over her shoulder, and she's doing a good job of sounding casual, but her cheeks are pink. Which is a good sign and not a good sign at all, because Hess's reasons stand, and Zilla is working with Ardith's father, and Ardith's time is part of their bargain.

“He seems happy but homesick,” says Zilla, sidestepping a little and falling into line behind Ardith when they reach the counter, waiting while Ardith pays and stepping up.

“That's the impression I get. He said he's flying in next Saturday late?”

“That's the current plan. I'll be doing one last farmer's market for him, staying a day or two while he sleeps off the time difference, and going back to Terian.” Zilla pays for her own goods, making an apologetic face at the cashier, the owner's daughter from what she's picked up, and turns back to Ardith, whose lips are pursed in thought. “I thought a month seemed so long, but it's flying by.”

“All the more reason to make sure you get a few flights in before you go,” says Ardith, and bounces on her feet a few times while Zilla arranges everything she got in her bag. “I should get Peony and go. I'll see you out at the farm in a few minutes?”

“Sounds great,” says Zilla, and follows her outside so she can send messages from the safety of the awning, watching Ardith stride off to the patch of grass in back of the main row of buildings in the downtown where she always seems to tether whatever pegasus she's riding that day. After a moment's thought, she sends her message to all four of the employees, so Lumi doesn't have to decide how much to gossip, letting them know she'll be gone another hour or two, and that when they're done dealing with the peaches, they can go home, and come back fresh to make some preserves in the morning.

Shay sends the first response, just an acknowledgment, and by then Zilla has heard the beating of wings overhead, so she fetches her bicycle and starts heading for the edge of town and the pegasus farm.

*

When she gets to Raised Wings, Lev waves from the porch, just a shape behind the screen, and she waves back, but it's clear Ardith had enough time to go inside and warn him she was coming, even though she's coming out of the barn.

“Just got the tack off Peony, she's not patient with beginners,” Ardith calls over the space between them as she trots a little closer. “You want Marjoram again?”

“I think we're coming to understand each other,” says Zilla, and comes to meet her in the middle. “Is he up in the air, or in the barn?”

“The barn, he usually is this time of day, so you don't get to call him down. Let's go in and get him tacked up, and I'll give you the safety lecture and show you the extra equipment. You shouldn't be more than twenty feet off the ground at the far reach of the lunge, but even that's a nasty fall.”

Zilla leads the way to the barn, and she listens carefully to the lecture, which is clear, comprehensive, and very severe. Ardith lays out the risks, the ways to mitigate them, how to signal Marjoram and Ardith herself if she's starting to feel dizzy or nauseated or scared, how to fall and to roll. She's provided with a stronger helmet than her bicycle helmet, and knee and elbow pads as well, and Ardith demonstrates functions of the saddle's stirrups that she hasn't before, which can lock or unlock, depending on whether it seems safer to dangle and try to regain her seat or let go.

“You understand?” Ardith asks when she's finished, and Marjoram has been coaxed out of his stall and saddled during the lecture. Zilla is starting to find the rhythm of tacking him up, starting to understand the order of the motions, how to make sure the girth is cinched tight and everything is comfortable for both of them. She concentrates on that, and Ardith's words, while her nerves flutter with the thought of flying. She's never even been in an airplane, never traveled far enough to bother.

“I do,” she says. “I trust you, and I trust Marjoram, and if anything feels even slightly off, I'll give him the signal to land.”

Ardith goes over all of Marjoram's tack while she explains how to make him take off and land, the two commands that are different for flying, at least at basic levels. Any experienced rider knows how to make a pegasus fly higher or lower, go in a roll or a loop, aim for a particular air current, bank away from birds, a thousand other tiny commands, but on the lunge, all Zilla needs to know is the very basics.

She feeds Marjoram one last sugar cube for luck and mounts without trouble, pleased with herself for how easy it's becoming, and walks him slowly out to the open ground where they went on the lunge the first time, when she was still on the ground. Ardith clips him to it again, brisk, and then looks up at Zilla. “Just walk him around a few times, and then trot, and then give him the signal. It's hard for them to go from a walk right to flying, so a bit more speed will be good. He may go beyond a trot right before he takes off, so brace yourself.”

Zilla's heart is in her throat, nervousness and excitement battling, as she encourages Marjoram to start walking. He does, clearly long-suffering, a little bored of her riding him without doing anything interesting, and she lets herself make sure she has his rhythm, that her seat is good, before she encourages him to trot.

Ardith, when she glances, has plenty of slack in the lead, but she's waiting for Zilla. If Zilla never gives the command, she and Marjoram will get practice trotting, valuable but not what she wants. Today, when she's feeling untethered, everyone thinking she's better off somewhere else, she wants to fly, so she gives Marjoram the signal, moves her heels the way Ardith told her, and knows she's lucky that she's good at taking instruction and has good body memory. If Ardith didn't somehow understand that she needs this, she would have made her practice the motions and the pressure a dozen times, to avoid miscommunication.

But Ardith showed Zilla well enough, and Zilla gets it across to Marjoram well enough, because he does speed up, the wind whipping in Zilla's face, and then she feels all his powerful muscle bunch and push beneath her, and she inhales sharply, stomach swooping with the movement, and leans down over his back as he beats his wings again and again, spiraling up and up as Ardith gives them her slack.

They're not far off the ground, perhaps just far enough that if they were closer, she could peek in the second story windows of Ardith's farmhouse, but that's enough to make Zilla laugh, trying not to crane her whole body to see. She doesn't have the amazing view she'd expected, but she's still close to the ground, and getting used to the sight of two huge brown wings beating on either side of her. When she looks up, some of the rest of the herd has collected above them, none flying low, probably seeing the neon shade of the lunge and knowing to avoid getting tangled in it, but curious, watching the lesson.

Zilla closes her eyes against the sun and laughs a little to herself at the sheer wonder of it, flying in the air on a pegasus, going in tight little circles, low enough that there are no air drafts to let Marjoram glide so he has to keep beating his wings. Ardith warned her it will tire him out faster than free flight, but she could stay up here all day, the wind tossing Marjoram's mane almost into her nose, from how low she's bending, feeling the patterns in the way his muscles move.

“Are you okay up there?” Ardith shouts, and they're so close that it's a surprise she has to shout, but with the beating of wings, Zilla can barely hear her.

“It's amazing,” she calls back, and opens her eyes.

It only lasts something like ten minutes, Marjoram tiring of the constant effort and the constraint of the lunge, and Zilla can feel him flagging only a few seconds before Ardith gives three gentle tugs on the lunge, saving her voice but getting the message across anyway. Zilla leans forward and gives Marjoram the signal to land, which he does with alacrity, lighting down on the ground with only a few running steps that seem to jolt the bones right out of her, now that she's seen what riding can be when the energy of every step doesn't get passed up to her.

“You enjoyed it?” Ardith asks, coming up to unclip the lunge, patting Marjoram's side. He's sweating a little, but not panting or in a lather.

Zilla dismounts, legs a little shaky underneath her. “I can't describe it. Thank you, Ardith. I really needed this.”

“Seemed like it. And it seemed like the least I could do.”

“You aren't the reason I was upset,” Zilla assures her.

“Still. Like I said, Hess told me to keep an eye on you, and anyway, when someone loves it this much, it's a shame not to help them.” Ardith shades her eyes and looks up at the house. “Da was making biscuits earlier. Want to come in for some? We can have honey on the top.”

Zilla laughs. “I can't deny my own honey, can I? If you trust me to cool him down and get his tack put away, you can warn him I'm coming.”

Ardith shrugs. “I'll help you out. Not that I don't trust you, but you're still a novice student, and it's been ingrained in me that I should supervise you. He wouldn't send you away, anyway. He likes you.”

Zilla knows he does, but that frank phrasing still warms her while they rub Marjoram down, take off his tack, and give him a good curry.

*

Inside, it smells deliciously of baked things and of cooking jam. “What have you had a harvest of?” she asks while she takes off her shoes. All of her smells strongly of horse, so whatever she can remove to keep the smell out of their house, she'll do.

Lev comes out into the hallway to smile at her. “I wasn't sure I'd see you this week, Zilla, hello. And I went and picked enough raspberries for a good batch of jam to can.”

“Delicious, Hess doesn't have a patch because he hates anything prickly but I love them. I'll trade you a jar for some plum jam, I need to pick Hess's plum tree in the next few days.”

Lev beams. “I wouldn't say no to that trade. Come in, let's eat on the porch, it's too nice a day not to. Ardith, are you changing?”

“I've got to go out again, no use in it,” says Ardith, and then looks between them. “If you want a consultation, I can go clean some stalls now, actually. I should have thought.”

Zilla turns to Lev, since it's his choice, and he gives them both an assessing look before he shakes his head. “You go out too. I don't want you at all my consultations, but maybe we should talk about what Zilla and I are doing.”

“Only if you want to,” says Zilla. “I'll keep your confidence.”

“Silly of me to keep it a secret, at least the overview,” he says, and shoos them out onto the porch while he goes to get the makings of their snack.

Zilla goes to the porch, as inviting as ever, and Ardith trails in her wake, arms crossed uncomfortably. “You have to feel comfortable with it too.”

“It's up to him. And honestly, some of what I'm advising him to do is going to require, if not your cooperation, at least your willingness to let him do it.”

Ardith makes a face like that gives her far too many possibilities to think over, but she sits down in one of the porch chairs anyway, and Zilla picks one too, not Lev's usual, but not hers either, since that's the one Ardith chose. There's no sign of the cat, whose name she still doesn't know, probably off on important errands or begging in the kitchen.

They sit in silence until Lev comes in—not awkward, precisely, but an active kind of silence, the kind that continually reminds Zilla that she's choosing not to speak. Ardith seems naturally inclined to silence, but Zilla isn't, so she's relieved when Lev comes in, with a tray of biscuits, a honey jar and another jar of something pink, and fresh lemonade in three glasses, already poured and slippery with condensation. It will taste sour next to the honey, but it's going to be refreshing after her flight.

“I saw you were up in the air,” Lev says as he sits down, sighing as the weight comes off his leg. “How was your first flight?”

“Like nothing else,” Zilla says, the sound of wingbeats still ringing in her ears. “These biscuits smell amazing.”

“My grandfather's recipe,” he says with easy smugness, and they all grab biscuits and plates, breaking them and adding butter and honey, all of them ignoring the jam that's labeled as this year's strawberry. It looks delicious, but Zilla can never resist honey.

When they're all served, both of the Kinreys look at Zilla, but she shakes her head. “No, you tell her what you want to say, Lev, and I'll add what I think I need to.”

“The simplest thing to say, then, is that I've let my life get too small, too constrained by missing your mother,” he says, and Zilla looks at Ardith, watches her flinch when he mentions Sima, watches her shoulders draw up a little. “I'll always miss her, but I've been trying to keep things so much the same, and they won't be.”

Ardith looks at Zilla, and Zilla nods and watches her think through it, all her self-protective instincts and the ways her grief is and isn't like his. “What do you want to do?” she finally asks.

Lev shrugs. “A lot of things, probably. Zilla and I have talked about whether we should reorganize or redecorate parts of the house, and about things that I can do when I can't be as active as I used to be, in here and around the barn. Part of the reason I've been cooking more this week. But it's going to have to be things like running more of our errands, too, and going out sometimes.”

“Going out how?” Ardith asks, sounding less suspicious than honestly baffled.

Zilla waves her hand for attention, quickly swallowing a mouthful of biscuit. “I was actually going to mention to you, Lev—no pressure at all, but I'm on the committee for town dinner in Hess's absence, and that's happening a week from tonight. I'd be happy to have you there for some company. Both of you, if you want to come along, Ardith. It's the day before Hess comes back, so it's my last celebration here.”

They exchange an uncertain look that's as good as a no, though she keeps her hopeful smile up. “I was thinking more me stopping by the farmer's market sometimes, and getting a muffin and some coffee at the cafe once a week while I read my paper,” Lev says. “A town dinner is everyone at once.”

Ardith raises her chin, ready to defend him now that he's showed anything like unwillingness. “Everyone talked so much, and they meant well, but—they talked.”

Zilla takes a sip of her lemonade before she nods. “It was honestly just a suggestion, and a hope for my sake. You're probably going to have to reckon with the town sooner or later, if you don't want to move the farm, but you can take it as slowly as you'd like to. Coffee and the farmer's market are a very good start.”

Lev takes that as a useful segue to change the subject, and he talks more about his few conversations with Zilla, the complicated charms she's getting ready for before she leaves, traditional constructions usually used at the changing of the seasons, or when a child enters or graduates from school, meant to ease transitions as much as possible. Ardith, to her pleasure, unbends a little, enough to ask some questions, and make some suggestions about changes to the house and routine, if not anything off their property. It's a start, at least.

“I should get back to the farm,” Zilla finally admits. “The employees are probably already gone, but I have some more work to do, and a charm or two I want to do tonight.”

“I'll see you out,” Ardith says, standing up right away, cleaning everything efficiently onto the tray before Lev can make a move to get up. “Da, you were on your feet all morning preparing those raspberries and then all afternoon tending them, you can take a break. I've got work to do in the barn anyway.”

And, Zilla suspects, Ardith has a few things to say to her out of her father's hearing, so she says her goodbyes, bends for a kiss on the cheek when Lev offers, and goes back out of the house, hopping back into her shoes on the way.

“I'm glad you're looking out for him,” Ardith says when they're outside, on the far side of the house from the porch where he can't hear them.

Zilla was expecting something more accusatory, and smiles. “He asked me to. And it's not a hardship. I like him. And you, for the record.” Ardith smiles, and Zilla bites her lip, wonders if she should say what she wants to or if she should leave on this genuine peace. Still, though, it needs saying, and she thinks the two of them need a lot of time to think about it before they go anywhere. “I really would like to see you both at the town dinner.”

That's a mistake. Ardith's face clouds right over. “I know you're trying to help, but you shouldn't push. We're not—I don't know, you can't fix us in your month here, a happy story to tell your coven, with our attending the town dinner to cap it off.”

Zilla is shaking her head before Ardith can finish. “It's not that. It's for me, not for you. I'd like some people there for me.” Ardith still looks dubious, so Zilla sighs and decides on honesty. “I'm a little lonely, Ardith, so new in town, and I've talked to you and Lev more than anyone else but my employees.”

“Lonely?” Ardith asks, with a look that's all sheer incomprehension. “You? Everyone loves you, they did the minute you walked into town. You're always making charms, and everyone at the farmer's market is always hoping for your attention, you're—the kind of person people want to have around. I don't know why you'd need us, in the face of that.”

For a moment, Zilla is just as baffled as Ardith, wondering what to say, how Ardith can't see what's so plain to her. “I'm friendly,” she finally says. “And yes, I'm charming, it's one of the things that make me a good witch. But I am the witch, and that tends to draw a line between me and others until I know them better, and on top of that, I'm new, and I'm anxious about spending a night at a party where everyone's known each other their whole lives and I don't know how to fit in. I don't have a place.” And, a little bitter, thinking of Nia's opposite-of-reassuring reassurances, “Anywhere.”

Ardith tilts her head. “Anywhere?”

Zilla spreads her hands, at a loss to explain even if she baited the question. “I'm temporary here, Hess is coming back and there's not enough for a lone witch to do to support me all the time. And in the city … my mentor said straight out that they don't need me, and that what I'm good at isn't really what they need me for.”

“That's why you were upset today,” Ardith says, putting the pieces together faster than Zilla would have expected. “Did you not want to go back?”

“It's my home. It's been my home my whole life, the way Allerston has been yours for your whole life. I never once considered I wouldn't be returning, but I think she assumed as soon as I left that I was going to stay gone, and that maybe she was relieved about it. For my sake,” she adds in answer to the growing outrage on Ardith's face. “She likes me, they all like me. People do tend to like me. But that doesn't mean I belong. But I like you and Lev, and I like Marjoram, and how much you want a unicorn to come to your farm, and I like Hess's farm and his employees, and even if I don't know what I'm going back to, I'd like to celebrate that.”

“I don't know if we can,” says Ardith slowly, “but I'll think about it.”

“I don't want to pressure you. It's an invitation, not a witching prescription.”

“I understand that now. We'll think about it.” To Zilla's shock, Ardith reaches for her hand and holds it, reassuring warmth, her palm crossed with calluses from hard work in the barn. “I'm teaching you as part of a bargain, but you're not witching for me. You can talk if you need to. While we're riding. Probably you'd prefer Hess, but I might do in the meantime.”

Zilla swallows down the lump in her throat at that. “I'll remember the offer. You're not second best to Hess, or anyone. I just don't know what I'd say.”

“Well, if you think of anything, you can say it to me,” says Ardith, and then as natural as breathing, she's bending just a little to kiss Zilla. It's almost nothing, the pressure of their mouths together, but it can't be mistaken for anything but what it is, and she can almost feel Ardith's pulse hammering where their palms are pressed together.

After a second, Ardith jerks back, drops Zilla's hand, and retreats a few hasty steps. “I'll think about it,” Zilla says, on dazed autopilot.

“Do,” says Ardith, and then backs up another step. “I should go to the barn.”

“Right. And I should go home.”

Ardith is out of sight, striding into the barn, before Zilla manages to get on her bike and start pedaling. She looks over her shoulder as she goes down the drive, but all she sees are shapes wheeling in the sky, and the swaying of the wildflowers in the pasture, and the lone stall down at the treeline, no sign of anything in it.

*

Zilla doesn't usually think of herself as a coward, but her thoughts are chasing themselves around, about Ardith, and her promise to Hess, and if that promise is valid if Ardith is acting very different than he expected, about kisses and flying and a week left before she leaves.

When a man from the next town calls the next morning and asks for a witching consultation and says Sunday morning would be most convenient for him, she should say no and offer alternate times. Instead, she goes out to Hess's commercial kitchen, where Lumi and Gil are peeling peaches to preserve while Mara and Shay pick the plum tree. “I hate to do this, but I've had a request for a consultation for Sunday morning. It would be about two hours, call it two and a half with travel, and I'd be there to open up and break down, but I'd need some coverage during that time. Do any of you want a few extra hours of pay?”

They exchange a look, telegraphing a conversation the way only good friends can. “Mara and I are doing a family thing,” Gil finally says. “But Lumi, you're saving up for that concert trip, right? And Shay could always use some cash, though I can't speak for them.”

Lumi, when Zilla looks at her, shrugs, though her gaze is penetrating enough that Zilla suspects she sees more of what's going on than Zilla would like her to. “Sure, I can do it. And I'll ask Shay. All of us have done it a few times, when Hess has had stuff to do, you'll just have to let us know about honey prices.”

“I absolutely will,” says Zilla. “And I am going to sing all of your praises to Hess when he gets back, I don't know how I would have done this without all of you.”

“You would have been fine,” says Lumi, so casual about it that Zilla can't help but feel warmed.

Shay does say yes, and happily, their eye apparently on a new bicycle, and Zilla throws her attention into preserving the peaches and into starting some plum jam, and ignores that the hours where she agreed to meet are just the ones where Ardith always shows up at the farmer's market.


	5. Week Four

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In Zilla's last week in Allerston, she keeps very busy preparing for the town dinner, but she still finds the time to go out for a flight at Raised Wings.

“How's business been?” Zilla asks Shay and Lumi when she gets back to her stall with barely five minutes to spare after driving far too fast back from her consultation, where she was thankfully paid in money for her efforts and got to do some green magic to deal with a chronically blighted and unhappy garden that had the owners pushed past all endurance.

“Busy,” says Shay, who's leaning against the back of the stall fanning themselves discreetly with a cardboard flap torn off a box.

“Ardith Kinrey asked after you.” Lumi raises her eyebrows. “Seemed kind of disappointed you weren't around.”

“Don't gossip about our customers,” Zilla says, more sharply than she means to with Vi right next door. “Anything else of note happen?”

They exchange the looks of people who will definitely be talking about all of that later, but Shay answers pretty quickly, gesturing around at all the baskets. “People are buying a lot. I'm pretty sure Mrs. Berren took every onion we brought and also most of the string beans.”

“We're supplying plenty for the main dishes,” Zilla says, inspecting the levels of various vegetables. They're going to be sold out of a lot by the time the market closes. “Hess was pretty clear about the levels. Did Lida seem exasperated or upset?”

“No, I think they were for her personal dish,” says Shay, hands stuffed in their pockets. “People go all out for the dinners. That's why we're doing one.”

“Right, we'll work out kitchen schedules for that tomorrow,” Zilla promises, reaching out and letting Lumi hand her the apron stuffed with money, automatically reaching in to count it to get a sense for how the busy morning is impacting their profits. “For now, you two go ahead and enjoy the rest of your day.” She pulls a little money out of the apron and hands it to Shay, who's closest. “Go get yourself some popsicles from the man down the row, I had one last week and they're delicious.”

Lumi grins at her. “Spice. Hess never buys us popsicles, you should stick around,” she says, and then she's grabbing Shay's arm and they're both getting out a ragged goodbye before they run off on her.

“They're good kids,” says Vi from the next stall. “I kept an eye on them but they didn't need my help at all.”

Zilla smiles at her even if she wants to shake her a little for being such a busybody. “I trust them! That's why I left them alone, otherwise I would have rescheduled my appointment.”

Vi probably has an answer for that, but Zilla has customers, so she throws herself into dealing with them, and then the next ones, and the next time she has a chance to look up, half her baskets are empty and the ones remaining aren't very full at all, and the market is starting to close up. There are a few last lingering customers, and she sells some wilted lettuce cheaply just so she doesn't have to haul it home and try to sell it to a market or have a very lackluster salad for dinner.

The trip back to Hess's farm is much easier pedaling than usual, with nearly all of her produce gone, but it means she's going to be behind on her Tuesday deliveries, so when she gets back to the farm, she ignores her charms and her worries and spends the afternoon picking a plentiful crop of peppers and tomatoes, with plenty still on the plants to pick as the weeks go on.

*

Zilla keeps all four of Hess's employees busy with picking the next day, filling crates and baskets up with as much as they can hold. Hess sends several homesick messages when she sends him a picture of all of it all stacked and stored together, ready to be delivered, and then several more messages detailing the latest technique he's learning about propagation. In response, she tells him she misses him and sends him a picture of the kids sprawled under one of the shade trees, Gil flat on his back with his arms splayed out and Mara using his stomach as a table for her water bottle, the other two refusing to pose in a way that's basically posing.

He calls after they've gone home for the day, voice cracking after a day of work and talk. “You should be sleeping,” Zilla tells him after a few routine exchanges.

“Yeah, but I realized we hadn't really talked. Everything going okay?”

She doesn't know how to explain the situation with Ardith, or the situation with the coven, how caught-between she's feeling, knowing that people in both places like her but don't really have a place for her as far as she can tell. “Busy with the town dinner,” she says instead of any of it.

“I can't believe Lida pulled you into that. I specifically told her that you probably would be overwhelmed and shouldn't be bothered about it.”

“I am busy, but I like being busy. And it's not so bad, even if I'm going to have to take a lot of Friday off from the farm to set up and cook. Have I told you that your kids are making some kind of eggplant dish? They're adorably excited about it.”

Hess laughs. “You told me they were cooking, but not eggplant. That's great, I feel like I always plant too much, it's never one of our big sellers. Maybe we should start selling baba ganoush as a value-added. And I'm glad you're having fun, even if I still wish I hadn't left so much on your plate. But Ardith says you've been getting out to the farm for some lessons?”

“Yes. It's really kind of her to teach me. Have you ever been flying?”

“I think most of our class at school took lessons out there as kids, with her parents, but I haven't been in years. For two old friends living in the same town, we don't hang out much.” He hesitates, and she's about to tell him he doesn't need to say anything he's uncomfortable saying when he continues. “She's spent so much time taking care of Lev that she hasn't really talked much to anyone around town since the accident.”

“That's the impression I get.”

“I probably shouldn't have warned you off,” he says, and he sounds unhappy and exhausted. Even a vacation full of learning useful and interesting things can wear a person down after a while, and it helps a little that he seems to be in the same mood she was last week, the one that's still lingering at least a little. “It sounds like you're really good for each other.”

Zilla sighs and shakes her head and pulls her feet up on his couch. She wishes she were on the hammock, but there are occasional showers, and she doesn't like getting rained on. “You were right, though. We're friends, I think, which is good, but I'm leaving, and nobody should have to be hurt by that.”

There's silence down the line, half comfortable and half really not. “Are you doing okay?” he finally asks. “I know I abandoned you in a town where you don't know anyone, and I trusted you to get on friendly terms with everyone pretty much immediately, which seems to have happened, but that doesn't mean you're happy.”

“I really like it here. But I know I have to think about my future with the coven as soon as I get back, and I keep thinking how much more fun this would all be if I were just here on a vacation to help you out.”

“Anytime, Zill. I mean it. And anytime you want to talk about what you want.”

“I wish I knew. But thanks, Hess. And the same to you—I'm happy to hear about ambitions and insecurities and anything else.”

His yawn is a crackle in her ear. “We'll have a good talk when I'm home, okay? I won't let you go home without us talking about you, and what you want. Especially because whatever that is about your future with the coven sounds really ominous, and I've got a few things I want to talk over too.”

“Yeah.” She doesn't want to talk about it, but she has to, because it isn't going to be less real if she ignores it. Nia said when she agreed to this that she and Zilla will talk about Zilla's future when she's back, and now she has more of an idea of what Nia is assuming her future will look like, and she has no idea what any of it means, or what she wants it to mean. “We'll talk about it, I promise. But you need to get some sleep, and whatever I need to fix, it won't get fixed tonight.”

“I'll hold you to that,” he threatens, but it's easy enough to make him hang up and to turn her attention to the charms she's still working on, though she's stopped taking commissions for new ones, with another dozen to finish before she goes home, and the farm and the town dinner to distract her in the meantime.

*

Tuesday is her last full round of deliveries, and everyone seems to have realized it—wherever she goes, Zilla is plied with tea and company and, at some of the restaurants, a few tastes of whatever is on the menu for lunch. Back at Deep Roots, she sets Hess's employees to work weeding the squash and harvesting the next few things that are ripe while she works on a few batches of pickles, and when they finish work for the day, she waves them off, hangs up her apron, and gets on her bike to go to Raised Wings.

She's in the habit, by now, of looking up as she arrives, looking to see the arrangement of the herd above her. She can control her bicycle well enough not to be knocked over if she hits a pebble while she isn't watching the road. Today, she looks up just in time to see a pegasus with a rider wing away at a speed that would have her screaming, if she could cling on that tight, going from nearly over her head to over the trees and still going within seconds.

When Zilla pulls to a stop and looks around, wondering if it's worth it to stay when Ardith is clearly in the middle of something, she finds Lev on the doorstep, eyes shaded with his hand, watching in the direction Ardith was going. “I should have called ahead,” she calls out, dismounting to close the last of the distance between them on foot.

Lev jumps a little, then turns to her and smiles. “Well, she may be busy, but I'm happy to see you, anyway.”

“And I you.” Zilla waves in the direction Ardith is going, though she's invisible now, hidden by trees and distance. “I don't think I've seen her fly like that before.”

“It's been a while, but she's been at it a lot these past few days.” He puts his hands in his pockets and steps down from the doorstep. “She's always had a good instinct for flying—Sima always said it's because she had her up there strapped to her chest when she was only a few weeks old. She was a good racer, and speeds like these? She'd make some serious competitions. Especially on Peony.”

It's hard to imagine Ardith, so collected and reserved, speeding around racecourses, going fast enough to win, enjoying the competition and the attention that comes with it. “Do you think that's her plan? It doesn't seem to be what she's been doing this past while.”

“She wasn't. She said that first year she'd probably never compete again.” He finally makes it all the way over to Zilla, shoulder to shoulder with her instead of facing her, both of them looking off after Ardith, wondering if she'll wind her way back yet. “But I think I heard her calling an old competition friend the day before yesterday, asking about changes to qualification procedures.”

Zilla glances at him sidelong. “I don't want to hear anything she wouldn't want me to know.”

Lev waves a hand. “I'm just trying to show you that we are moving forward. In strange ways, but we're moving.”

“We? I'm glad to hear about Ardith, but she's not my client. You are. What are you doing for yourself?”

After a moment of quiet, Lev sighs. “Changing around the order of the bookshelves to one I find easier. Looking into an accounting course so I can keep better track of our books.” He taps her on the arm, and she looks at him, inquiring. “Come on. I know a way we can fulfill both sides of our bargain at once. Marjoram's aloft, call him down and get him to the barn, I'll meet you there.”

Before Zilla can ask him any questions, though she has her suspicions about the answers, he's off to the barn. She could overtake him easily, when he's still a little shaky on his feet, the lingering results of the spinal injury he got trying to save Sima, and ask him those questions, to make sure he's only doing what he wants to, and not what he thinks he should. But whatever it is he's doing, he seems to need it, and Zilla's presence seems to have tipped him into following through, so she lets him go and starts the now-familiar series of gestures that gets Marjoram's attention. He's on the ground, grazing on flowers near the treeline on the far side of the pasture from the unicorn stall, and he barely takes off, skimming his way over to her and nosing her shoulder for treats.

“In the barn,” she assures him. “This wasn't a planned visit, so I don't have anything set aside for you.”

Inside the barn, Lev is putting the tack on Marigold, a pretty bay, one of the older of the herd—Marjoram's aunt, Ardith mentioned once when they passed her riding. She's nosing at him eagerly, her posture alert, nearly prancing like a colt to be taken out, or maybe to have Lev's attention, since she seems to take Ardith and Zilla's presences with equanimity. “Good, you've got him,” he says.

“Yes, though I need to steal some sugar cubes, I didn't bring bribes.”

“You spoil him,” says Lev, but doesn't prevent her from feeding him one, and helps her check her tack when he inevitably finishes before her, especially the additional flight straps, double-checking that she knows all the releases, and the distance from the ground where she should use each one.

Zilla bites her lip, but she has the superstitious feeling Ardith won't forgive her if she doesn't ask. “Are you going to be okay, old injuries and all? I get the impression you haven't done this in a while.”

“If I were going to do anything but fly very low and slowly on a gentle pegasus, I wouldn't be trying it, but you and I seem to be at the same level right now.”

“I haven't flown off the lunge yet.”

“It's easier. You'll like it.” He nods at her. “Mount up. I can get up, I'm just going to use the block.”

“Well, so am I. Marjoram is a lot taller than I am. Ardith should have picked me a shorter pegasus if she wanted me to get on without help.”

Lev laughs, but he doesn't object, and only insists through his silent and polite standing back when they reach the mounting block that she gets on first. She's torn for a moment, but she walks Marjoram out of the barn, leaving Lev behind her to get on Marigold however he can, and they're walking a little circuit around the barn when he comes out a minute later, his seat much less awkward than Zilla's. “They'll stay together when we fly them,” he says. “All you have to do is let him follow me, and pull back if he tries to lead Marigold instead. If you were going to be around longer, we'd teach you much better, and show you how to find air drafts, but that's for independence. With someone else, as long as you know how to get out of his way, you'll be safe enough. Remember how to land?”

“Yes. If I feel out of control or scared, I'll bring him down and walk him back to the barn.”

“Good.” He smiles at her. “If you need a more immediate landing from higher up, that's what the barn roof is for—it's a little inconvenient getting the tack down, but it's doable.”

“Okay.” She checks her hold on the reins, the clasps on her helmet, and looks over at him. “You first.”

Lev starts at a walk, and then a trot, and then a canter, which Zilla hasn't learned still, and then he's aloft with a few powerful beats of Marigold's wings, the transition so much smoother and easier than Zilla can manage. As soon as they're in the air, Marjoram wants to go with them, so Zilla lets him do what he wants to do, letting him walk and then trot and then put on one last burst of speed when she tells him to take off, and then it's the wind in her face and the wingbeats in her ears again, and the whole world ahead of her, not just the space she can reach on the end of a lunge.

Most of the herd is above them, enjoying the cool breeze of late afternoon, a sign that summer's going to end, that might even lead to a chilly night. Lev keeps Marigold low, barely catching the air currents, and Marjoram is well-trained, and knows that to have a rider means to stay with any other member of the herd who has a rider too. He wheels, and then he's in the draft of Marigold's wings, just behind her and to one side where they can take the most advantage of the air that their wings churn up as they fly.

The circling that the lunge forced on Marjoram seems to be a natural movement, even if these circles are bigger, as he and Marigold spiral up and find a comfortable altitude, in the air currents without being beyond their control. Elsewhere, the rest of the herd is flying with abandon, in huge circles, or at larger speeds, or playing with the air currents to go up and down, a roller coaster without tracks. Zilla is glad that Lev has Marigold under control, that they're both on sedate animals, because her stomach is swooping as it is, and the thought of how it would pitch if Marjoram took a sudden dive and pulled up again is enough to make her grateful to be a novice.

Lev doesn't seem to want to go very far, or very high. She could always shout across the wingspans between them if she wanted to ask, but she doesn't really care, and communication with all the noise of flight doesn't seem worth it. She remembers a documentary she saw once about griffin-riders on the south-western continent who always hunt in flights of three and communicate with pipes, high sounds that cut through the air like birdsong does, and wonders if the Kinreys ever used whistles when they all used to fly together.

This flight, where she's being trusted more, where she doesn't have the stricture of knowing that she's always a measurable amount of feet from Ardith, is full of a bit less unbridled joy. Now, there are the edges of worries about keeping her seat, about the gaps of air on every side of her and making sure they're safely maintained.

As they wing a slow circle around the big pasture, Zilla misses her bees with a sudden pang. From the air, the barn may as well be a hive, the whole herd its own community, flying down for the right flowers and grasses and even leaves—from this angle, it's easy to see that the sturdier trees don't have many leaves at the top.

She catches Ardith's return more as a blur than as sensible motion. Most of the herd is moving faster than Zilla and Lev are, at the kind of medium speed that seems natural to them in the air, so one very fast shape draws her attention just in time to see Ardith and Peony bank, going from sprinting speed to barely moving in just a few seconds as they change position to make sense of Zilla and Lev's presence.

In the sky, they have to build wingspans into distances, so it's hard to see Ardith's face, but she can read surprise in the set of her shoulders, and then unhappiness before she brings Peony down to their level and speed, falling down on Lev's other side. She shouts something Lev can hear but Zilla can't make out, and then there's a quick conversation in a shorthand of gestures, nothing as formal as the calls they use when they want a pegasus to come down, though it seems practiced enough that she supposes it answers her musings about whistles.

Whatever the conversation is, it leads to Ardith splitting off, aiming for a clear landing ground near the barn, taking Peony's reins, and leading her inside. Zilla looks at Lev, and he shrugs and shakes his head, but it's only a few more minutes before he starts spiraling Marigold down lower, and she nudges Marjoram to follow.

Landing, under Lev's guidance, is smooth, a last few wingbeats giving way to hitting the ground with wings outstretched and a run to get rid of momentum, a much more natural finish than what the lunge forced. When they slow to a walk, Zilla sighs with relief at the way the noise abates and steers Marjoram over to Marigold and Lev, who landed much more gracefully and closer to the barn.

“You did very well, for your first off-lunge flight,” he calls when she gets close enough.

“And you were amazing,” she says, and waits till she's close enough to lower her voice before she continues. “Are we in trouble, though?”

Lev doesn't pretend to misunderstand her, though the quirk of his mouth says he's a little exasperated that it's a concern. “I think she was scared. She probably won't bluster too much about it.”

“Will she be okay?”

“We're trying,” he assures her, and they ride the rest of the way to the barn before he dismounts, staggering a little, and then Ardith is there, pink-cheeked from the wind, the hair that's peeking out of her helmet blown all around, supporting him.

Zilla busies herself dismounting Marjoram and starting to take off his tack, and she's reaching for the curry comb by the time they're finished reassuring each other. When she dares to look, Ardith is looking a little sheepish and a little angry, and she gives Zilla a tight smile when she catches her looking. “I've got to rub Peony down a little, she hasn't had to work that hard in a while, but then I can catch up with you, Zilla? Are you staying a while?”

“I'll serve dinner, we have chicken salad and more of my biscuits,” Lev offers right away.

Ardith doesn't seem more annoyed, so she'd probably be genuinely fine with Zilla staying, but she shakes her head anyway. “I've got some more work to do tonight, and I have to be up early tomorrow, herbs are best harvested early and I'm supplying most of them for the town dinner.”

“Okay, then we'll have a quick chat when we're all done taking care of Peony and Marjoram,” says Ardith, and strides off to rub down Peony.

Zilla takes care with Marjoram and lets him go when he starts seeming impatient rather than grateful about the grooming. Marigold is already out, eating grass in the pasture as the rest of the herd starts to land for the evening, with the sun starting to set, and Lev is inside, giving them space in an obvious way, at least with merciful silence.

As soon as Marjoram is gone, Zilla starts walking down the stable hall. She finds Ardith standing in front of a stall—Anemone's, when she gets closer, the pregnant mare. Zilla leans on the door and finds Anemone within, still pregnant, somehow visibly larger than she was before. “Poor thing looks ready to have it over with yesterday,” Zilla observes, mostly for something to say.

“We're expecting it this week,” says Ardith.

A silence stretches out, and Zilla thinks about asking her about the kiss, but they both know the answers to those questions. It's not a good idea. Not with Zilla leaving. She asks another question, just as important. “Are you angry at me for going flying with Lev? Or hurt?”

“I don't know. A little of both, but neither is reasonable, so it's not your problem if I'm feeling them.” Ardith crosses her arms and keeps looking at Anemone. “As far as I know, that's the first time he's flown since Mom died.”

“I'm sorry. It must be hard for a stranger to be beside him for it instead of you.”

“You aren't a stranger. And even if it's hard, it's what he needed. And I was flying higher anyway.”

“Is that what you need?”

The silence stretches out again, but this time Ardith is looking at her, and Zilla looks back. This silence isn't hers to break. “I think maybe,” Ardith finally says. “Want to help me with the evening feed? They'll start coming in soon.”

Zilla checks the time, and is shocked to find that a ride that felt like it lasted five minutes took most of an hour, with a lengthy cleaning and grooming afterwards. She's going to be very late for dinner and charm work and sleep if she stays, but she wants to stay. “For a while. I'm surprised you have to feed them, though, with the pasture so lush.”

“If we feed them, the pasture doesn't get over-grazed, and they don't go farther afield and scare the neighbors or just never come back. Plus, we can make sure about nutrition.”

That, at least, is an area of conversation that isn't fraught, so Zilla asks questions about pegasus husbandry as she hauls oats, Ardith taking care of the hay, filling feed bags and making sure stall doors are ready for the evening exodus.

Eventually, there's no excuse to stay, and they walk out of the barn just in time for the sun to reach the tops of the trees that bound the pasture. “You were flying well,” Ardith says when Zilla doesn't make a move for her bicycle. “When do you have time for another lesson this week? You helped Da today, I can admit that. I owe you.”

Zilla shakes her head. “I helped him and I got my lesson. I'd—I want to ride again, to fly again, but I can't make promises. The town dinner is Friday night and I have a lot of work to do between now and then. And then I'm picking Hess up on Saturday, and leaving Monday or Tuesday.”

“Okay. You've been—it's helped to have you in town, Zilla. Everyone loves you.”

“Thank you.” On impulse, she puts her hand on Ardith's arm. “Even if I can't come, I'd love to see you and Lev again. The dinner—I know it's hard, I do. And I don't want you to do it if it will hurt. But I want you there. For me.”

Ardith takes a deep breath. “I'll think about it.”

It's a better answer than the last one, and Zilla isn't going to push harder. She wants a real yes, not a forced one. “Thank you. And maybe I'll stop by when I can. And I'm still running the farmer's market on Sunday, since Hess will need sleep, so maybe I'll see you then.”

“Probably.” Ardith hesitates. “I missed you last weekend.”

“Shay said. But I had an appointment, and honestly ...”

“No, I know.” Ardith looks down the field, eyes a little unfocused, watching the herd land one by one, knowing it's time for dinner, knowing they're losing the light.

Zilla looks too, squinting at the far end of the field and the unicorn stall, and blinks at a flash of white, too quick to parse. “Ardith, look,” she says anyway, and points unnecessarily.

Ardith does, head whipping, and they wait for ten seconds, thirty, but there's nothing else, just a gentle breeze rippling through the field. “I guess not,” she says.

“It could be, still. It was just a flash, something white down there, but you've been trying so hard. It really could be.”

“Or it could be some of the wild carrot blowing in the wind, or a dove flying through. I hope it is, but if a unicorn wants you to know it's there, it shows itself. It's no use waiting.”

“I just want it to be so badly. You and Lev deserve it.”

Ardith shrugs and turns firmly away, so Zilla joins her. “It's not a matter of deserving. Just of hoping, and trying. I'll go down and replace the treats tomorrow, and the bedding. I'll let you know if there's something.”

“I would make time for that. Or for Anemone's foal.”

Ardith smiles. “I'll keep it in mind. But you should go. Once it starts getting dark, it goes fast, and I know you've got a light, but all you need is a fox trying to cross the road at the wrong time.”

“Tell Lev good night from me,” says Zilla, and does what Ardith suggests, pedaling away, head spinning with so much on her mind.

*

“You must be busy with the town dinner,” Nia says when Zilla calls her the next afternoon from the porch where she's shucking the first batch of ears of corn, which she's shamelessly appropriating for her dish for the dinner. Out in the shed where the commercial kitchen is, there's the occasional shriek of laughter as her employees work on their dish, which they hope to have ready to freeze before they go home, so they can help her with her preparations over the next two days. “I'm surprised you have time to call.”

“I'm working while I do,” says Zilla. “And I wanted to do one last check-in, ask if there's anything I should know about for next week that would impact my return date.”

“You're still planning to come back, then?”

Last week, Zilla took the hurt that came from a similar tone and swallowed it. This week, she sighs and puts down an ear of corn so she can concentrate. “You say that like you don't want me to. You seemed like you were saying it last week, too. Am I not welcome in the coven?”

“Of course you are,” Nia says instantly, so shocked and horrified that Zilla has to believe her. “You're an amazing, accomplished witch, and on top of it, we all like you. You're a valuable asset.” She heaves a sigh that's the “but” she doesn't want to say and then continues like she said it. “When I talk about you staying there, or finding somewhere like it, it's for your sake. Here, we can't keep you coven employed indefinitely, and coven strictures prevent you from expanding out so you can do witching full-time. Your skills and strengths are amazingly fit for a rural lone witch. If you don't want that, we need to have a long and serious talk about what you do want. We've talked about it in vague terms, but I suppose now it's time to get specific.”

“I don't know. I've lived in Terian my whole life, and I know that fearing change doesn't stop it from coming, but I'm still frightened, especially because they're happy to have me around permanently, but nobody's said anything about me staying.” Zilla sighs and sits back, putting down her ear of corn. “And then I think about the bees, how hard it is to be specific with the honey when there's more ground to cover, and … I don't know.”

“There's a lot to think about. And to talk about, it sounds like. I'm not going to make your decisions for you, but for what it's worth, you've sounded happy there. With your friend back, things would be different, but maybe not as much as you're thinking.”

“I'll think about it.” She might not be able to do much else. “It really has been amazing, but I've been thinking of it as a break. I don't know if it would be as amazing in the long-term.”

“Don't you?”

Zilla has been doing this a month now. It's the hardest work she's had to do in a long time, more physical than her usual taking care of city plants, of beds it only takes an hour to harvest instead of most of a day—even if it's a vacation, she's working as hard as she would have to if she could somehow stay. “Maybe. But what if it isn't? And either way, it's not like I could just tell Hess I'm staying, or beg him to let me, and I certainly don't have any other opportunities that would fully support me.”

Nia's voice is soft when she answers. “You'd have to ask him about that last, though even if he couldn't use you I bet he'd let you stay long enough to find someone who could. But either way, the door won't close on you here, you know. I can't think of a member of this coven who wouldn't be happy to have you back, if you decided country life wasn't for you. After a month or after five years. Politics aren't so strict that once you've been a lone witch you have to go through all the screening again.”

Zilla doesn't want to come back a failure, but that's a stupid reason not to do something, assuming she'll fail before she begins something. “I can't do anything until I talk to Hess and a few other people. And you.” She doesn't know how to have the conversation with Hess, but he's already planning to ask her what she wants. She'll just have to figure out how to tell him that what she wants is to do what she's been doing for the past month, as a partner in his business, when he's never told her that's what he wants. She shakes her head, clearing away the fears she can't deal with right now. “Regardless, I'm coming back next week. With that in mind, my initial question stands—is there a time that's better or worse?”

“Nessa has to go home on Thursday,” Nia admits, gracefully accepting that Zilla can't deal with too much more serious conversation. “We're almost certain she's going to contract with us, and long-term, but whether you stay or not, I want you two to have some long talks. When's the soonest you can get away?”

“If I take the high-speed, I can leave late Monday afternoon and get to Terian in time for dinner,” she says, and just like that, it's approved and they're talking about logistics and Zilla hangs up with a fixed endpoint less than a week away.

It's no use dwelling on it, though, so she gets back to shucking corn, and listens to the sounds of laughter floating over from the kitchen. When she finishes, she makes a bowl of popcorn, throws in her favorite spice mix, and takes it out to them.

They're all messy, only Gil bothering with an apron (though even he has a dot of something that looks tomato sauce on his nose), arguing over flavorings in the sauce, and they fall on Zilla's popcorn and even invite her to stay, though she's firmly told not to help, that they want to work on their own. In the end, she brings in some charm work and stays there with them until the food is finished and stored away, waiting to be warmed up on Friday before the dinner.

“Label it for allergens,” she advises them, waving the affinity bag she's working on, and while Shay, whose handwriting is voted the best, writes them out, Lumi brings her a proud spoonful from the cooking dish after scraping it. Zilla tastes it and smiles. “Careful,” she says, “or Lida Berren might just recruit you to the committee next time.”

There's general cheering at that, but they disperse pretty quickly when the dishes are done and the counters are cleaned and sterilized, which Zilla does insist on supervising under the guise of helping, and Zilla takes her charms back to the porch and does her best to give them her full attention.

*

The next few days seem to develop extra hours simply by sheer force of Lida Berren's will. She and Moro, who can't get through a meeting without arguing, take the whole event in their collective iron fist, which leads Zilla to send Hess a wondering and slightly terrified message asking if they spend most of their time fighting because otherwise they would just take over the world with sheer efficiency. He sends back laughing sympathy and complains in his turn about how his teachers are packing his head with as much knowledge as they can in the last few days of his course.

Zilla hardly has time to think about Ardith, or Nia, or her future. On top of her usual duties, she delivers vegetables all around town for people to make their dishes for the dinner, and she makes her own, as well as enough affinity bags for everyone in town. She spends most of Thursday afternoon and evening following Lida's merciless instructions for making sure the town center is decorated to her exacting standards, hanging lights and making flower arrangements of some of Vi's stock.

When she steps off a ladder after stringing yet another light, Moro is there waiting not with another task but with a bottle of cider offered out to her. Zilla takes it with a smile. “Keeping the workforce happy?”

“Rewarding the workforce for working hard enough that we're done for the night,” he corrects, and produces his own bottle to tap against hers. “You still set to come mid-afternoon tomorrow to finish up the cooking and get ready to receive people?”

“Yes, I got ahead on work as much as I could this week for just that reason.” She takes a sip of the cider—not Hess's, but cold and just a little tart and just what she needs after a warm day of hard work. “Didn't want to leave Hess too much to do when he gets back.”

Moro raises his eyebrows. “That on top of all your extra work with this? You work yourself hard.”

Zilla shrugs. “It's better than sitting around with nothing to do.”

“Still. Don't you let Lida make you do too much tomorrow, you deserve to enjoy the party.”

Considering Moro's the one who's been fussy over the placement of the lights and plenty of other things tonight, that's a little bit funny, but Zilla just shakes her head. “I like being useful. And I don't have family or close friends coming like most of the rest of the committee, so if I'm free to do a few extra dishes, I'll do them.”

“We'll see about that,” he says, with a scowl dark enough to make her nervous about his intentions. “And besides. Everyone's going to be fighting to have the witch at their table, as long as we've got you. Though you should know that the committee almost always sits together, with our families. The better to try to convince each other to put out any fires that spring up.”

Zilla laughs and changes the subject to his garden, which she saw when she stopped by to bring him some early tomatoes as part of her deliveries, but she spends the rest of her bottle of cider thinking about it, before she yawns and he tells her to get home, shooing her away before she can offer to help him pack up the last few things so he can go home himself.

*

Zilla gets to the community center the next afternoon around three to find it already buried in chaos. The two ovens are both in use, as well as more hot plates than can probably be safely plugged into the outlets, and when she peeks inside the fridge and freezer, they're both packed full. She's arrived with her own dish and with the eggplant dish from Hess's employees, and she's greeted with equal parts joy and stress on behalf of the committee member trying to organize the kitchen.

When she asks what's most useful, she's set in front of the sink with dish soap and a sponge and told to wash anything that touches it, which she does for the next hour until Lida arrives with a grandson who she puts firmly in charge of the sinks before pulling Zilla out to deal with her affinity bags and the allergen labels, which have become more her project than anyone else's. That means sitting at Lida's side while Lida checks in dishes from people arriving or stopping by, checking ingredient cards and begging people to write them if they haven't already.

In the end, by the time there's a line of people ready to pay for the dinner rather than bring their dishes and the crew inside has started bringing out all the warm food to serve, there are only five dishes that haven't been labeled, which Lida tells her is a frank miracle. Two of them were dishes brought by spouses or children with no idea what was in them and three, Lida assures her, are from curmudgeons who wouldn't share their family recipes if a dragon was about to roast them if they didn't.

“Go fill your plate up,” Lida orders when they're just about to let people in. “Committee privilege. We'll be sitting somewhere up toward the hall so we can go running to replace things we have extra of if need be, and you're welcome to join there or declare yourself off duty—you're new to these town dinners, you deserve the chance to relax and enjoy.”

Zilla wants to crane her neck at the line, looking out for Lev and Ardith, but she doesn't really expect them to come, so instead she stands up and smiles at Lida. “I'll probably sit with all of you, since you're the ones I know best, but I won't say no to the opportunity to sit and watch everyone enjoy all our delicious food.”

Lida waves her off, and as the crowd starts shuffling in behind her, Zilla fills her plate to bursting with everything that smelled tempting when she was inside doing dishes, including a generous helping of the eggplant dish from the kids, and then juggles the plate and a cup full of mint-infused water as she goes looking for a seat. Moro is at the table she thinks Lida meant, and he waves her over, so she joins him, picking a seat where she can look at the people coming in, and sits back to watch the line move along, not wanting to start eating without more people there.

It's not the whole town, but it feels like the whole town—she's learned, over the past few weeks, that they usually feed a good quarter of the town at one of these dinners, and the town center is packed with tables it's nearly impossible to navigate between in anticipation.

After a moment where she just watches the crowd as an organism, like she likes to do in Terian, the ebb and flow of foot traffic, Moro clears his throat and starts telling her who everyone is, and their relations to each other. She knows Vi, but she doesn't know that she's married to the head of the fire department and that the flowers are a hobby and she commutes to the nearest hospital where she works as a nurse. He points out Lumi and her parents, who are affectionate with her and each other and are both wearing t-shirts from some sunny tourist destination, and says rumor has it they were spies before they retired to run the town's inn. Story upon story, until the crowd, even if he only talks about a tenth of them, don't feel like strangers anymore, and until the tables are more than half full and the line of people is still coming.

“And that's why you should never buy paint if Pender is behind the counter at the hardware store,” he concludes at the end of one story, and then takes a sharp breath. “Well, I'll be.”

Zilla looks at him, curious, and then follows his gaze when he doesn't elaborate, and there are Lev and Ardith, he leaning on his cane and she with her shoulders practically around her ears. They're both nearly to the tables of food in the line, looking desperately uncomfortable, and she's standing before she knows it. “I'll be right back,” she promises, and abandons her plate of rapidly cooling food to go to them. “You came!” she says when she gets there, just in time for them each to pick up a plate. “There should be space at my table, if you want to come.”

“That's the committee table, it will be full as soon as the line's mostly empty,” says Lev, which is probably true but no less disappointing for that. “I'm hoping we can find a quiet corner on the edge of things.”

“Then I'll come to you.”

“For dessert,” says Ardith, surprisingly firm. “I remember—usually when most people are sitting down the committee gets acknowledged, and you should be with the rest of them for that. But sure, for dessert, come visit us.”

Zilla shakes her head. “I asked you both to come.”

“That doesn't mean you have to babysit us,” says Lev, with some asperity.

“I'm not! I just want to spend time with my friends.” But they're both stubborn, and she suspects that if there's some acknowledgment of the committee, they'd like to keep out of that kind of public moment. “Fine, though. But I'm definitely having dessert with you. I'm sorry I've been too busy to come by.” She lowers her voice. “And your charms are nearly done, Lev, I'll deliver them before I go, I promise.”

“You got us started,” says Lev. “That's what I asked you to do. But I'll be glad to spend a bit more time with you. And for the charms, when you're done with them.”

“Then I'll be over as soon as I can, and take care of those as soon as I can too,” she promises, and goes back to the committee table, which is filling up now that the crowd is calming down.

Moro raises his eyebrows when she sits and takes a sip of her water and finally picks up her fork, determined to eat a little faster than usual so she can go talk to the Kinreys. “Been a while since I saw Lev,” he observes. “We used to get our coffees at the same time in the mornings. I'll have to pay him a visit one of these months.”

“You'd have to ask him,” says Zilla, but she smiles, and he smiles back, suddenly conspirators, and he gracefully changes the subject before Lida arrives at the table.

Not everything is delicious. Zilla has been to too many coven dinners to expect that. But the eggplant dish is wonderful, and there are rolls she would cheerfully commit murder to get the recipe for, and delicious salads full of things from Hess's garden and others. Even if they're unevenly warm and all mixed together on a plate too small to fit all the tiny spoons of a dozen things she's put on it, she eats every bite and even gets a second roll and a spoonful of someone's belatedly-arrived bean salad.

Almost as soon as she's done that, there's the ringing of a bell, and the hum of conversation dies in favor of attention on a woman a few tables away, vaguely familiar from the farmer's market, who Moro tells her in a whisper is the chair of the town select board and not given to long speeches, so she shouldn't worry.

“I won't talk long,” she begins, sure enough, shouting but even then not loud enough that people on the edge of the crowd can hear her without straining. “I know we all want to get back to eating! But I want to thank our events committee for their hard work, as always. I think we can agree they've surpassed themselves. Won't you all stand up?” They do, and Zilla doesn't pretend at modesty, just stands up when Moro does. “Under the direction of Lida Berren, they've been doing amazing work, so let's all give a hand for Lida in particular.” Zilla claps obediently, and so does everyone else, and when the applause dies down, the speech continues. “I'd also like to thank a new member of the committee, who joined as a favor when one of the members had to leave for a while—I think many of us have met Zilla while she's been here running Deep Roots, and I'm told that she's been indispensable, and that we have her to thank for the affinity bags keeping some of our allergen-sensitive attendees safe! So a round of applause to Zilla too, and I hope I speak for all of us when I say that I hope we'll see you around again.”

The applause at that is reassuringly sincere, even as Zilla blushes and makes an awkward wave. Moro nudges her with his shoulder, and Lida beams at her, and out in the crowd she catches Lumi grinning and clapping, Gil putting his fingers in his mouth to whistle, Shay catching her looking and giving a thumbs up, Lev just at the edge of the light as it starts getting dark outside pounding his cane on the ground. Ardith is just far enough away and in shadow that Zilla can't hope to make out her expression, but she's applauding too.

Zilla, bolstered by all of that, takes a showy little bow and then sits firmly down when the rest of the committee does, and is happy to listen to a few announcements about ballot mailings for an election for town treasurer and the ordinance committee seeking new members before the selectwoman sits down and everyone takes it as a cue to mob the dessert table.

“I promised the Kinreys I'd eat dessert with them,” says Zilla to Moro as soon as the crowd thins out even a little bit. “I'll see you later.”

“You go home when you're done,” he says firmly, patting her on the shoulder. “You've done more than enough work today, and all week. Other people can cart chairs around.”

Zilla shakes her head. “I'm on the committee—”

“You're only here a few more days. Go have your talk with the Kinrey girl, and if I see you around here later, I'll send you home.” He smiles at her. “Come back sometime, won't you?”

“I'm really going to try,” she says, and gets up.

It's something of a fight to get to the dessert table, let alone to Ardith and Lev. It seems like everyone she passes wants to stop her, ask her how much longer she'll be in town, whether she plans to come back, if she still has time to do a bit more witching before she goes, if she'll ship crates of honey to them over the winter. By the time she gets to the dessert table, most of the more popular dishes are already picked clean, but she gets what looks like a very delicious cookie and a chocolate covered cherry from a plate of chocolates.

The Kinreys, when she reaches them, were faster to the dessert table, Lev with a slice of cheesecake and Ardith with a brownie that's still soft and warm. There's a young couple Zilla doesn't recognize paying attention to a fussing toddler on the other end of the table, but other than that, they're alone. “Did you pick an empty table?” she asks. “Or have you been abandoned?”

“Mostly people who need to leave early sit out on the edges,” says Lev. “There were a few other people here, but they ate fast and headed home, things to do. We shouldn't stay too late either. Ardith brought Peony over and it's no good flying in the dark.”

Zilla smiles at him. “Did you fly in too?”

“No, drove the truck. Not ready to fly off the property yet.” But he's smiling back, so whether he's gone for another ride or not, he and Ardith have probably come to some kind of peace about it. “Seems like you're the most popular woman here tonight.”

She waves a dismissive hand. “I'm new, that's all. She was very kind to mention me, though. How's Anemone?”

“We're going to call the vet out next week if she hasn't foaled by then,” says Ardith. “But I think she's just about ready, she's been keeping very close to the barn.”

They talk about Anemone, and then about how Ardith's training with Peony is going, and then about the man from a nearby city who has a gelding he'd like to board with them and how they're not sure about expanding the herd. A few people stop by the table, pretending so hard to be casual that they're failing terribly at it, thanking Zilla for her part in the dinner and asking a few awkward questions of the Kinreys before they move on.

After the third of those, Lev sighs and pushes his chair back. “I'm guessing half the town is going to show up at the farm in the next few weeks and we should prepare ourselves for more casseroles, Ardith. But I'm going to head home, and judging by how little light is in the sky, you should too. I'll fold up a few chairs before I go, though.”

He starts doing just that, and Zilla and Ardith stand to join him, folding them up and leaning them together, and when they realize how few people there are at the next few tables, folding those up too. “How late do you have to stay?” Ardith asks as they work.

Zilla shrugs. “Moro told me to go whenever I'm ready—newcomer's privilege not to have to break things down. So I'll probably leave when you do. I biked over, but I've got a light, so I won't be heading home in the dark.”

“If you want to travel together for a bit, I'll walk Peony and you can walk your bike until we get out of town and to where we have to split up,” Ardith offers.

Lev is smiling at them, and Zilla knows that it might not be the best idea, considering she's only got three more days in town, but if Ardith wants to spend time with her, she won't turn her down. “That sounds great,” she says, and turns to Lev. “If I don't see you—”

“You'll see me,” he assures her. “I know you're going on Monday, but I'll stop by the market on Sunday to say hello, or maybe you can stop by the farm one more time. Bring Hess along, I haven't seen him in a while, and you'll both be tired. We can feed you. Lunch on Monday, maybe.”

Zilla swallows. “That sounds really nice. I'll ask him about it, but I bet he'll say yes.”

“Do,” says Lev, and heaves himself to his feet. “I'm going to get home and get the barn all closed up. You take your time, Ardith.”

Ardith visibly swallows down questions about whether he can or should be shutting the barn down and gives him a nod and a tight smile instead. “Home in a bit, then, Da.”

Lev waves at both of them, ducks an obvious attempt to ensnare him in conversation from an older woman Zilla thinks she recognizes from the general store, and disappears into the darkening dusk. Zilla stacks a few more chairs for good measure, but around the lit-up space of the town center, everyone who's left is making quick work of breaking things down, stacking dishes and chairs, breaking tables down. Lida is flitting from place to place, supervising, and Moro is at the tables, calling out to people to get their dishes. Zilla, at least, doesn't have to do that, since she used a disposable dish and so did the kids.

“Everything seems well in hand,” says Ardith, probably noticing the way she's looking around. “Do you think you can get away?”

“Let's go,” she says, and ducks out of the light. “Where's Peony? I'll meet you with my bike as soon as I can.”

“There's a hitching post behind the general store that everyone who rides into the town center tends to use. Meet you back there?”

“Great.” Zilla trots off into the crowd, letting Ardith go in the other direction, and only gets pulled into three conversations on the way to where her bicycle is parked outside the community center. Still, by the time she gets to the general store, Ardith is waiting for her, Peony's reins wrapped around her hand, Peony dancing a little like she's excited to get off the ground, though she's happy enough to take Zilla's bribe of a few carrot sticks that she stole from a platter as she passed. “Will she be patient enough to walk?”

Ardith shrugs. “She's been through worse. And it's good for her, ground training and socialization. If we start racing, she's going to have to prove she can behave on the ground and in crowds. This is just the first step of that.”

Zilla starts walking, holding the handlebars of her bicycle so it rolls along beside her, and Ardith joins her a second later, both of them on the middle with Peony as the opposite bracket, hooves making a steady beat against the gravel. “You're really planning on racing, then? That's amazing.”

“I think I am. Not to set records, or to win much, but to have a goal, and to get out word about some of our breeding lines. And because my mother would have wanted me to keep doing it.”

“Good, then. If there are any races near Terian ...”

“There probably won't be. Cities don't really have the space for pegasus racetracks. But I'd love to see you anytime you could get away.” Ardith stuffs her free hand in her pocket, and it makes Zilla hyperconscious of hers, the way it's swinging by her side, and how close they're walking. “You've changed things a lot. For everyone around here, I think, but especially for Da and me.”

“Is that a good thing? I'm not always sure you like me. That you feel like I'm forcing things.”

Ardith does her the favor of thinking about it. “It's a good thing. I won't pretend I didn't resent you some, but I asked you to talk to Da in the first place, so I always knew it was stupid. But I like you. And we're going to be better.”

“Good. I want the best for the two of you. Everyone here, but especially you two. And Hess, and his employees, and … well, everyone. But especially you.”

They walk on for a little while, out of the town center, through the few rows of residential streets that make up the downtown before it all gives way to roads passable by car and larger properties, where there are lights on in houses and people sitting on porches wringing the last of the daylight from the day, who wave as they go by. “There are things I want to say,” Ardith finally says when they reach the crossroads where it makes the most sense for Zilla to go right and her to go left. “But you're leaving on Monday, and I'm staying here. My whole life is here.”

Zilla takes a breath and stops. Ardith does too, although Peony tries to dance a few steps away again, after walking patiently through the town. “And my whole life is there. I—I really wish I could make promises, but I can't. I have a lot to think about and figure out, more than I thought I did a month ago.” She scuffs the toe of her shoe against the road. “Hess warned me off, after that first day at the market.”

“Did he? Why?”

“He knows you're exactly my type, and he knew that we could break each other's hearts a little too easily.” She shrugs. “And he knew that if I tried right off you would run in the other direction as fast as you could.”

To her credit, Ardith doesn't try arguing with the second half of that. Instead, she tilts her head thoughtfully. “Are we going to be heartbroken over this?”

“I don't know. I'm going to regret the opportunity lost, but I also think if we'd let it get farther after I kissed you last week, we would feel even worse than we do now. And that trying to do something not knowing if we're ever going to be in the same place again is a recipe for disaster. We're doing the smart thing.”

Even in the increasing dark, she can see the twist of Ardith's half-smile. “I suppose that's some comfort. I wish, though.”

“I wish too,” says Zilla, and doesn't think there's more that she can say. “I'll probably see you Monday for lunch, but Lev and Hess will be there, so—goodbye, Ardith. I'm really glad I got to know you.”

“Goodbye. Me too.”

They both have to stop to put on their helmets then, laughing a little at the awkwardness when they've already had their bittersweet parting, and then Ardith is putting her foot into the stirrup and swinging up, and Zilla is climbing onto her bicycle, and she pedals away first, and is almost out of earshot before she hears the sound of Peony cantering for speed and then the sound of one wingbeat, and then another, in the quiet night air.

Even though the stars are out by the time she gets to Deep Roots, she puts her bicycle away and lays down in the hammock for an hour before she goes inside, looking up at the sky and thinking.

*

Zilla drives Hess's truck out to the airport after one last morning's harvest, replenishing stocks before the farmer's market. She'll have more to do later, after Hess crashes, but for the moment, she parks and waits to hear from him, and as soon as she does, a tired message letting her know that he's waiting for baggage, she abandons the truck and goes in to find him.

As tall as he is, especially with the month he's gone without a haircut, it's easy to spot him in the crowd of weary travelers, and she gives him a wave and watches him track the movement and break out into a beam as soon as he realizes it's her. Another few seconds and she's skirted around the crowd to throw her arms around his shoulders and pull him down for a proper hug, which he responds to right away with his arms heavy and warm against her back. “Missed you,” he says.

“You too,” she says, and pulls back far enough to look at him. He looks superficially tired, but overall well, and it's clear the course was good for him, so she smiles. “I want to hear everything. And so does half the town, I've been fielding queries about you. And I think Mara is just going to make you give her the course all over again.”

“Mara—and the rest of them—all tell me that you're a great boss and I should feel free to take a vacation anytime, so it's clear you've spoiled them.”

“Checking up on me?”

“Checking up on them,” he corrects, and shifts so he can keep his arm around her shoulders while they watch for his luggage. “But yes, also on you, but that was mostly through Ardith.”

“She mentioned you'd been in touch.” He's giving her a look, and all she can do is shrug. “We'll talk all of it back at home, okay? There's a lot to catch up on.”

“And I owe you a conversation, too, I haven't forgotten that. Plus I've got a few questions on my own behalf,” he says, and then the luggage from his flight has the mercy to start coming, and he abandons her with a firm kiss to her temple to go fetch his bag so they can stumble out of the airport, where he takes a deep breath of fresh air as soon as they're in it. “Worst thing about traveling is all the stale air,” he says, predictably, and she laughs and agrees and leads him to the truck, refusing to let him drive and letting him get settled in, knee jiggling in the passenger seat.

“I've got my ticket booked for the last fast rail out on Monday,” she says when they're on their way. May as well get the worst out first.

“Sure I can't convince you to stay longer? We need to talk.”

“I need to talk with the coven too,” she counters. “Nia asked me back so I can talk to a prospective, so back I go. But I'll definitely come back sometime.” Hess makes an unhappy noise but doesn't answer, and Zilla doesn't look at him before she continues. “Lev Kinrey asked us to lunch on Monday, to spend a bit more time before I go, if you think you'll be up for company by then.”

“For the Kinreys, and Lev's cooking? Of course I'm up for it.” He taps his fingers against the dashboard a few times, and she does glance at him when she stops at a sign to wait for traffic. “Ardith?”

“I've got my ticket booked,” she says, and Hess gives her a searching look, but then he's kind enough to change the subject to sketching outlines of what he learned at his class, and perceptive enough to hold her free hand whenever she doesn't need it to drive.

Just like she did when he first drove her to Allerston, he spends a lot of time peering out the window, watching as the scenery gets more and more familiar, smile visibly brightening when they cross the town line, and as soon as she turns the truck off in his driveway, he's out the door, standing there, turning around to look at all of his fields and his growing orchard in the distance. He's going to have a good crop of apples for the year.

“You're going to fall over if you don't at least take a nap,” she says when he takes a few steps towards the squash patch. “Come on, come inside, I'll make you a drink to take up with you and wake you in time for dinner and then we can talk.”

Hess doesn't go any further, but he doesn't turn away from looking across the fields either, and Zilla walks up next to him. “Thank you,” he says when they've stood there for a moment. “For taking care of it all.”

Zilla shakes her head. “Thank _you_. I've really loved it.”

“I'm actually really glad to hear that,” he says, with another searching look, and lets her pull him inside.

*

“You're too exhausted from your flight to sort out my future tonight,” Zilla declares when Hess tries to mumble his way into an attempt over dinner. “You can tell me about your course and I'll catch you up on town gossip, and we'll deal with me tomorrow after the market.”

“You're always deflecting the conversation off yourself.”

“This time I really mean it, though. I can't procrastinate on thinking about my future forever. So tell me about what you learned, and about all these big plans you're considering.”

Hess smiles at her and takes a sip of water. “Some of them are the delirious product of spending a month with intelligent, ambitious people, but I think I want to start selling some seed, a combination of rare heirlooms and newly bred varieties—I've always done a bit of that, but there's a market around here, and I've learned a lot of new techniques.”

“Sounds like a lot of work. Or are you planning to do less of the vegetables for markets and restaurants?”

He gives her a lightning-quick look before he shrugs. “We can talk about the work part tomorrow. Right now, let me tell you about the breeding programs they've got going.”

Zilla mostly eats her dinner while he talks, occasionally interjecting so he can have a chance to eat too, as he talks about seed collectives and new varieties and a hundred other things that catch her imagination too, things that will make Deep Roots well known all over the country, if he can do it at the scale he seems to want to.

There's something unsaid in all of it, but she's starting to understand what that might be.


	6. After

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Zilla meets the newest arrival at Raised Wings and makes a decision about her future.

Hess, over Zilla's objections, insists on coming to the farmer's market on Sunday. “I missed everyone,” he says when she scolds him, and she can't really argue with that, so they pack everything up together while he exclaims over how little honey she has left to sell, and they go to the market.

Zilla is used to being a novelty, but Hess's return means that their stall is even busier than usual, with everyone stopping by to tell him hello and, to her pleasure, to tell him how well she's done in his absence, how much help she was with the dinner and how half the households in town have at least one new charm thanks to her.

“You have a new hammock, thanks to a trade,” she tells him in between customers. “I haven't got space for it in the city, so it's yours. A few other things too, but that's the best one by far.”

“I'll send you lots of pictures of me falling out of it,” he promises, fussing with the arrangement of the produce now that some of it is gone. It's likely they'll sell out of most of their popular vegetables before the day is over, and most of their stone fruit too, between the combination of being behind after the dinner and being the most popular stall at the market with everyone visiting Hess. “People didn't bother you too much, did they?”

“I like being bothered.” She turns to tidy her honey, since he's organizing everything else. “Though I'm leaving with more than I arrived with, I went to the post office earlier in the week so I could mail everything I can't fit on the train with me. Whatever witch ends up here next is going to have some work to do if they want to be paid in coin, or they're going to have to take very good inventory of what they need.”

“You expect a witch to show up and stick around?”

Zilla isn't foolish enough to miss the implications in that, not after some of the hints he started making after his nap yesterday, but the farmer's market isn't the place to talk about it. “I don't know,” she settles on saying. “It depends on what else a witch could find to do here, since charms and witching wouldn't sustain them forever.”

“That's definitely something to talk about. I want to—”

“Hessel! Come here and give me a hug,” says Lida Berren, and Hess sighs deeply and goes to follow orders and let her give him a comprehensive summary of the entire month he was gone in surprisingly little time before she summons Zilla over to use her as an exhibit in her summary of the dinner itself. “Meetings start for the fall dinner this week,” she says cheerfully, and Hess laughs. “Will you try to come back for that, Zilla? You really should.”

“We'll see what the coven says.” Lida makes a displeased noise about that, but she allows it to stand, and moves on, and after a few more customers Zilla and Hess have another moment to breathe. “Has the whole town just been planning on keeping me?” she wonders, automatically starting the count of the day's cash.

“Not against your will. It's just that when people like you, they tend to want you to stick around. And Lida's the master of the active kind of wishful thinking where you bully people into making those wishes come true.”

“The fact that she never decided to become a witch is shocking to me.” She kicks him gently in the ankle and makes him look at her. “If you've got an offer, make it when we get back to the farm. You've been dropping hints, but I can't plan a future around hints. I'm not making any decisions right now, and the coven is owed a lot of consideration here, but if I've got an option I didn't know I had, I want to know about it.”

“My grand plan would have worked a little better if I'd actually told you the end goal,” Hess admits, “but then again, I wasn't sure about a lot of factors, like whether after a month of intensive work I would really want to expand operations, and I wanted to know if you like it here or not without the thought of the future hanging over you.”

“I appreciate that. But that's definitely not a farmer's market conversation.”

Hess nods. “Later, then. Now, tell me how my kids have been behaving, I want to be able to impress them with my omniscience when I see them again.”

Zilla laughs, grateful for the change of subject, and tells him about how they've been doing until the next customer arrives and they get back into the rhythm of the morning. They're selling out of everything quickly, still recovering from the dent the town dinner put in their stock, but nobody seems to care much if they only leave with two tomatoes or three ears of corn. They're there to see Hess.

Lev shows up in the late morning, when it's starting to be dusty and hot and Zilla is putting away empty baskets and changing the prices on the chalkboard to reflect stock. There are only five jars of honey left from the crates she started the month with, leaving aside the five Hess paid for to leave in his pantry to be used for his breakfasts, desserts, and tea.

“I said I'd come and here I am,” he says, giving them an easy smile, and Hess a warm and hearty handshake when he reaches out for one. “Hess, I didn't think you'd be here today.”

“I couldn't stay away, and see how I'm rewarded! I haven't seen you in way too long, though I hear I'm invited for lunch tomorrow, thanks to Zilla. How's Ardith?”

Lev looks between them. “She's part of the reason I'm here, actually. Zilla, I know you're coming by tomorrow, but she said you'd asked her to let you know if Anemone foaled, and she did in the night. If you'd like to see the foal, you're welcome to come over.”

Zilla is already taking a step forward, hands on the ties for her apron, before she remembers she's working and drops them to her sides again. “I will be there as soon as the market is shut down and everything is home,” she promises. “Everything okay? The baby is healthy?”

“Healthy and already figuring her legs out. It will be a few weeks before even the first attempts at flight, but she's already enjoying the sunshine.”

Whatever expression is on Zilla's face, it makes Hess laugh. “I'm not heartless enough to delay that meeting. Zill, go. I bet Ardith will be happy to see you.”

Zilla shakes herself and frowns at him. “I'll do no such thing. You shouldn't even be here, I'm not going to leave you alone.”

“And I'm not going to fall over and perish of being a little tired. Which you also are, don't think I haven't noticed all the long hours you've been putting in, from the timestamps on your messages about farm business. That and the charm work? As your current employer, I am telling you to get out of here. We hardly have anything left to sell, so I will hardly have any work to do to break everything down.”

“I can give you a ride, and then another ride back to pick your bicycle up when you're ready to go back,” Lev offers, giving Hess a conspiratorial smile that would annoy Zilla if they weren't both convincing her to do something that she wants to do.

With a sigh that she suspects does very little to hide her excitement, Zilla capitulates. “We took the tractor over, so you won't even need to do that. Well, I'll still need to get home. But that's less out of the way.” She unties her apron and hands it to Hess. “And if you need me, call me. I still feel awful about leaving you alone here.”

“Please, I owe you about a hundred favors for all the work you've been doing, even if I was paying you for it,” he says. “Lev, did you want anything before you go?”

Lev picks out a few vegetables, humming quietly to himself in an obvious show of not giving them privacy, and Zilla meets Hess's serious look. “What?”

“Just … not a farmer's market conversation, but in case it comes up, if you want a future here, you've got one.”

Zilla takes a deep breath. “Okay. Good to know. I don't know if it will come up, and I still have to think, but like I said—good to know my options.”

Hess smiles and clasps her hand for a second before going to help Lev, and Zilla goes over to her little shelf of honey and picks up the smallest jar, the one sample size she has left, of the same kind she took out on the train to Allerston, the one that always helps with beginnings, with joy and optimism. “I'm taking this,” she tells Hess. “You can mark it off my pay.”

Hess laughs, but he dutifully does it, and gives Lev a massive discount on the vegetables by shamelessly lying that Zilla forgot to change the prices before he shoos them away.

“In all honesty, did she really ask you to come invite me, or was this your idea?” Zilla asks as they walk to the nearest municipal parking, jittery with nerves like the foal will particularly care about her presence on her first day of life.

“It was hers,” says Lev, with a gentle hand on her shoulder, and then has the mercy to keep up a gentle monologue about the weather and the herd and Ardith's training schedule without expecting more than the occasional hum of acknowledgment while Zilla thinks about that, and about the offer from Hess, with few enough details that she isn't sure but just enough to make a few things seem possible if she can just take the step.

*

Lev abandons her as soon as they're at the farm, claiming that he has calls to make to enter the new foal into official stud books, since apparently the stallion who visited for the purpose is one who's won more than a few races, though Zilla suspects that usually isn't done for a few weeks. Zilla takes a few deep breaths and goes around the back of the barn alone, knowing Ardith won't be in the barn if the foal is testing her legs outside.

Sure enough, they're all in the shadow at the back of the barn—quite a few curious onlookers watching the new addition to their herd, Ardith, Anemone, and the baby. Even Marjoram is there, peering at the foal as she trots experimentally in an ungainly circle. She looks a lot like her mother in coloring, but she's all limbs and wings, the tips of them dragging on the ground like she doesn't quite have the muscle control to keep them up or fold them yet. There's an innate balance, though, that tells Zilla she'll be ready to fly sooner rather than later.

“What have you named her?” she calls, startling Ardith and the foal but no one else, judging by how easily the herd moves to let her through to stand next to Ardith, safely leaning against the barn out of the way of clumsy legs and wings.

“She's named Aster,” says Ardith, and then, “Hello. Thank you for coming. I wasn't sure you'd be able to get away, since you said you were handling the market alone today and I know Hess just got home, but I was hoping.”

“We were lucky. Hess insisted on coming even though I told him to stay home and nap. How are they? Was it an easy birth?”

“I had no idea it was happening until I came into the barn this morning and saw them, so it must have gone pretty well. Anemone seems tired but not unduly so, and she's already been for a short flight to stretch her wings, once the rest of the herd was ringed around to keep Aster safe.”

Zilla produces the jar of honey from her pocket. “I brought a present. I'm guessing little Aster shouldn't have any of this yet, but something restorative for Anemone?”

Ardith smiles at her, bright and warm. “That's a blessing. Of course you'd think of it, and Anemone would love some, and Aster can get it through her. She can't get her nose into that jar, though. Tip some into your palm and she'll lick it. Not too much, she'll get spoiled. And don't get near Aster till she lets you.”

“Not more than a sugar cube or two,” Zilla promises, and does as she's asked, tipping out what would be a spoonful of tea into her palm before she hands the jar to Ardith, who promptly dips her finger in for a taste of her own, closing her eyes when it touches her tongue.

Several members of the herd seem interested, but when Zilla offers her palm specifically to Anemone, they don't shoulder in to try for the treat. Anemone isn't coy about the treat, and licks it off Zilla's hand with delicacy and then blows a huff of air in her face that makes Zilla laugh. After a moment, she steps aside and draws her wings up, and Zilla realizes that she's being given permission to introduce herself to Aster.

At first, Aster staggers back a frightened step, but when Zilla waits, palm outstretched, she prances a few steps forward and sticks her nose into Zilla's palm, bumping her hand back with the surprising strength of it, and apparently not understanding licking, attempts to nibble or suckle on her hand, making her snatch it back. “That's not going to get you anywhere,” she says, and gently pets Aster's neck, bending a little as she does. “You are lovely, aren't you?”

“We've all got high hopes for her,” says Ardith, and when Zilla turns around, letting Aster return to the very important business of figuring the world out, she's smiling, watching Zilla more than she's watching Anemone or Aster. “I know you're supposed to be here tomorrow, but I wanted you here on her first day.”

“I would have been sad not to be invited. Thank you for this.” She retreats to the barn wall, close enough to Ardith that their arms almost touch. “It feels like a present meant just for my last day here.”

“I wish you could stay,” says Ardith, and it was one thing to hear it in the almost-dark on their way home after the town dinner, the half-a-wish that Zilla knew the end of, but it's another to hear it in the light of day, when they can't excuse themselves as easily. When they have to talk about it. “I keep hoping that you'll just say you are, that Hess has invited you to work at his farm full-time, because I know he needs someone if he expands his operation as much as he wants to, and you could keep your bees, and we could see what this could be.”

With Ardith and Hess both encouraging it, it's an easy and beautiful future to imagine. Being Hess's partner at the farm, helping him with the new propagation techniques he's trying, probably living in his guest room, joining town committees and making charms in her spare time. Her bees in a wildflower field behind the house, and new beds of flowers so she could keep her specificity without all the close-together rooftop gardens in Terian. And, in her free time, visiting Ardith and Lev, learning to ride and to fly better and faster, falling in love as easy as breathing, when she's already on the path.

And on the other side, her life in Terian, with a coven full of people who already know and love her, with her bees and her friends and her rounds. She'll have to find another job, maybe at a nursery or a park, and stop tying up the coven's resources, cut back on her witching out of fairness to the rest of them. She'll get to know Nessa and be friends with her too, and maybe run for coven office in a few years, join Nia on the board, find other people to love there, visit Hess when she can snatch the time.

They could both be good futures, but she knows which one she wants. “I can't stay,” she says, and twists to offer Ardith her hands when her face falls. “But I can come back.”

Ardith catches her breath and swallows. “Do you want to?”

“I do. It would be hard, and there are a lot of details to think about, and it would be anywhere between a month and six months before I practically could, because I can't just leave the coven without notice, but I love it here. I love Allerston and Deep Roots and all the people here, and Marjoram and baby Aster and—I could very easily love you.”

“You too,” says Ardith, and Zilla hears it without the qualifiers, and wonders if Ardith heard her words that way too. “Will you try? I know life doesn't always work out that way, and maybe Hess won't be able to pay you what you're worth, or the coven will need you, but—as long as you're willing to try, it feels stupid to say goodbye and pretend this is the tragic end of a story when it doesn't have to be.”

“I'm going to try,” says Zilla, and kisses her. This time, she doesn't pull away. She lets herself feel it, lets Ardith take her time kissing her back, puts her arms around Ardith and holds on until, some time later, the kiss finds a natural ending. When she opens her eyes, Ardith's are still closed. “I promise,” she adds anyway.

“Let's go flying,” says Ardith, and opens her eyes. “We won't have time tomorrow, and I want to go flying again with you before you leave.”

Zilla could laugh, and ask if Ardith doesn't want to kiss her again, but she understands it, how all the happiness building up needs an outlet, and how flying is the purest joy Ardith knows. Maybe, in a few months, she'll be able to share her own best joys with Ardith, teach her how to check a hive, and the meditation of watching the traffic to and from one for a whole afternoon, workers leaving and returning, bringing back what their community needs, buzzing gently by her head on the way. “Yes,” she says, and turns away.

Every single pegasus there is ignoring them, their human affairs completely boring when there's a new foal to watch, and Zilla does laugh then, at how everything can feel different for her and they don't care at all. “Here, Marjoram,” she says, going to meet him in the middle, and Ardith steps out of the loose circle to call down Peony, who isn't with the members of the herd interested in the baby, letting Zilla steal back the honey on the way so she can bribe Marjoram one last time—for now, at least.

He takes the bribe with grace and gently noses her shoulder, a piece of affection that makes her tear up a little before she leads him into the barn to put his tack on. Ardith is only a minute behind her, and still finishes saddling Peony faster.

Zilla mounts without the mounting block just to try to show off, though she still stumbles a little, and Ardith does her the favor of thinking it's impressive, giving her a wide and genuine smile before she mounts herself, barely touching the stirrup in a more impressive show of skill than Zilla's, settling into the saddle with ease and prodding Peony into a walk to leave the barn.

Marjoram ambles after with little prompting from Zilla, and then it's the routine she's coming to know: a walk, and a trot, and a few faster steps, and then her stomach lurching and the sound of beating wings as the ground falls away from her. Following Peony and Ardith is very different from following Lev and Marigold, though. Ardith has Peony totally under control, but Peony pushes for more speed, for flying higher, and Ardith checks over her shoulder to make sure Zilla is okay and lets her do both, going higher and faster in tiny increments, until the whole of the farm and the woods bounding it are laid out beneath them.

A surprising amount of the herd is down with Aster, or near her, watching over her as she keeps on trying out new steps, and the few that aren't are flying high, enjoying the beautiful day. Ardith takes them in a wide circle, flying around to see it all from every angle, the moving herd beneath and above them, the sight making Zilla think that Ardith will love watching the bees just as much as she does, for the perspective on a community. She wants to share the thought, but that can wait until they land, and she closes her eyes for a moment and lets the wind on her face and the sound of wingbeats fill all of her senses, knowing Ardith is there just from the draft she catches from another pair of wings.

Ardith, on their second circle around, lets out a loud whoop of joy, and Zilla opens her eyes, ready to share in it, even if it's just at the joy of flight, to find her pointing down to the bottom of the pasture. It takes Zilla a moment, scanning from the air when she's not used to focusing from so high up, her heart in her throat, before she sees it: there, walking up towards the rest of the herd to meet Aster with all the rest of them, unmistakable and beautiful, is a unicorn.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My thanks to everyone who came along on this ride with me! I've very much enjoyed getting to try something new and different, and I hope all of you have too. <3


End file.
